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^V. 


UBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 


H.H.AUSTIN. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/collectorsluckOOcarriala 


COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 


A  charming  Sheraton  secretary  —  a  delicate  piece  with  tambour  doors 
and  beautiful  marquetry  —  filled  with  rare  lustre  pitchers. 


lllliClUIIIIIIIIIOIllllllllllUUIIIIIItUiauillllllllICtn 


Collector's 
Luck 


or 

A  Repository  of  Pleasant  and  Profit- 
able Discourses  Descriptive  of 
the  Household  Furniture 
and  Ornaments  of 
Olden  Time 


What  toil  did  honest  Curio  lake, 
What  strict  inquiries  did  he  make, 
To  get  one  medal  wanting  yet. 
And  perfect  all  his  Roman  set! 
'Tis  found!  and  oh!  his  happy  lot! 
'Tis  bought,  locked  up,  and  ne'er  forgot. 

— Prior. 


By  ALICE  VAN  LEER  CARRICK 

THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  PRESS 
Boston 


Copyright  1919  by 
THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  PRESS,  INC. 

First  Impression  July  1919 
Second  Impression  January  1920 
Third  Impression  February  1923 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


TO  ORDE  AND  ALICIA 


PREFACE 

I  WANT  to  write  another  dedication  as  well:  to 
times  past  and  gone ;  to  the  men  and  women  who  lived 
then;  and  to  these  old  things  that  are  the  tangible, 
present  symbols  of  their  faraway  lives.  Do  you  know, 
I  often  find  collectors  learning  history  from  a  little, 
personal  angle  that  more  academic  scholars  often- 
times overlook.  How  else  could  I  have  known  with 
such  happiness  my  adored  Horace  Walpole  or  gossip- 
ing Pepys?  Margaret  Winthrop  and  Eliza  Pinckney 
stretch  sisterly  hands  across  the  years  to  me,  and  I 
count  among  my  intimates  Judge  Samuel  Sewall  and 
worthy  Cotton  Mather. 

For,  if  you  collect  the  right  way,  —  and  there  is 
but  one  right  way,  —  you  cannot  help  absorbing 
the  politics  and  art  and  religion  of  your  chosen  pe- 
riod. Collecting  is  n't  just  a  fad;  it  is  n't  even  just  a 
"divine  madness":  properly  interpreted,  it  is  a  liberal 
education. 

And  so  to  these  old  days  and  ways  that  have  been 
my  kindest  guides,  and  to  the  readers  who  have 
walked  with  me  awhile  in  this  pleasant  pays  bleu, 
I  rededicate  "Collector's  Luck." 

A.  V.  L.  C. 

Webster  Cottage 

Hanover,  New  Hampshire 

Ajrril,  1919 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I     Collector's  Luck 


II  Stenciled  Furniture     . 

III  Pressed  Glassware 

IV  Old  Woven  Coverlets 
V  Lustre  Pitchers  and  Teacups 

VI  Old  Lights  and  Lamps 

VII  Old  Valentines  and  Silhouettes 

VIII  Old  Glassware 

IX  Old  White  Counterpanes 

X  Collector's  Luck  in  the  City 

XI  The  Friendly  Fireplace    . 

XII  Old  Dolls  and  Their  Furniture 


PAGE 

1 

17 

31 

46 

63 

77 

97 

113 

136 

158 

177 

194 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Sheraton  Secretary Frontispiece 

Sheraton  Bureau 5 

Heppelwhite  Card-Table;  Warming-Pan     ....  6 

Early  Georgian  Mirror;  Chippendale  Chair  ...  9 

Sofa  of  Chippendale  Type 10 

Empire  Table 13 

"Breaking  UP  Housekeeping" 14 

Tea-Caddy  and  Tray  Showing  Stencil  Design       .     .  19 

A  Stenciled  Fruit-Dish 20 

Four  Chairs  Showing  Interesting  Stencils.      ...  23 

A  Group  of  Interesting  Stencil  Trays 24 

Black-and-Gold  Stencil  Tray 27 

A  Beautiful  Tray  Showing  Unusual  Stencil  ...  28 

Pressed  Glassware 33 

Historic  Cup-Plates 34 

Cup-Plates  and  Compote 39 

Lacy-Patterned  Plates,  Sugar-Bowl,  Creamer,  and 

Salt-Cellars 40 

Platter  and  Cake-Dish 43 

Glassware  of  Our  Grandmother's  Day 44 

"The  Scotch  Blanket" 49 

The  "  Red,  White  AND  Blue  "  Coverlet 50 

Double-Woven  Coverlet  in  Rose  and  White  ...  55 

"  Lover's  Chain  "  AND  "  Lover's  Knot  " 56 

"The  Declaration  of  Independence"  Pattern     .     .  59 

"The  Cross"  and  "Single  Chariot  Wheel"  Designs  60 

Lustre  Pitchers  from  L 's  Collection  ....  67 

Pink  Lustre  and  Lustre  of  the  Bronzed  Tones    .      .  68 

Two  Beautiful  Lustre  Pitchers 71 


xiv  ILLUSTRATIONS 

More  Lustre  Ware 72 

Candlesticks 79 

More      Candlesticks;      Candle-Mould,     Whale-Oil 

Lamps,  AND  "Betty  Lamps" 80 

Candlesticks  of  Varying  Design 89 

Candlesticks    from    a    Rag-Fair    in    Paris;    Astral 

Lamp 90 

Charming  Lamps  of  Odd  Design 93 

Pressed-Glass  Candlestick  and  Girandoles     ...  94 

Valentines  that  Hang  in  the  "Prettiest  Room"       .  99 

The  "  Languishing  Lady  " 100 

"  The  Soldier  and  Sailor  "  Valentines 103 

The  "Second  Sailor"  and  the  "Pensive  Gentleman"  104 

Silhouettes 107 

More  Silhouettes 108 

Directoire    Gentleman     and    John     Randolph    of 

Roanoke Ill 

The  Lady  WHO  Adored  "  Childe  Harold  "  ....  112 
Glassware  from  Northern  New  England;  Enameled 

Stiegel  Mug 115 

Waterford  Glass;  Decanters 116 

Stiegel  Glass  and  Other  Glassware 119 

More  Stiegel  Glassware 120 

Fragile  Venetian  Glasses 123 

Opaque  Bristol  Pieces;  and  the  "Lafayette  De- 
canters"   124 

Jacobite  Glasses 129 

"Firing-Glasses" 130 

An  Interesting   Group  of  Engraved   Glass  and  a 

Cut  and  Engraved  Cruet  of  Unusual  Design     .      .  133 

A  Quaint  Bottle;  Five  Flip  Glasses 134 

Washington's  Bedroom  at  Mt.  Vernon  ....  139 
Old  Quilted  Counterpane  Designed  by  a  Hungarian 

Exile 140 


ILLUSTRATIONS  xv 

Quilted  White  Counterpane  with  Padded  Design     .  143 

L 's  Candle-Wicking  Spread 144 

The  Candle-Wicking  Spread  E Made    ....  147 

The  Spread  E Used  as  a  Model 148 

The  "  Cross-Stitch  "  Candle-Wicking  Spread  .      .      .  151 
Eighteenth-Century  Linen  Spread  Embroidered  in 

Soft  Wools 152 

Beautiful  Candle-Wicking  Spread  of  Deep  and  Sym- 
metrical Design 155 

Old  Knitted  Spread  OF  "  Fan  "  Pattern       ....  156 

Two  Interesting  Chairs 161 

Maple  Chair,  Bought  in  Boston  for  Twelve  Dollars  162 

Mahogany  Tip-Table 165 

Empire  Dining-Table 166 

Empire  Work-Table  and  Footstool 167 

Pressed-Glass  Candlesticks;  Sheffield  Cake-Basket  168 

"Courting-Mirror" 171 

Lustre  Pitchers  and  Mug 172 

Fireplace  from  the  Paul  Revere  House,  Boston  .      .  179 

The  Author's  Late  Eighteenth-Century  Fireplace  180 

Old  Hand- Wrought  Iron  Andirons 183 

Old  Franklin  Fire-Frame 184 

Late  Eighteenth-Century  Fireplace 187 

Iron  and  Brass  Andirons 188 

The  "Acorn-Top"  Pattern 191 

A  "Two  Dollar  Gamble"  IN  Andirons 192 

Early  Eighteenth-Century  Doll's  Chest  and  Minia- 
ture Sofa 195 

A  Group  of  Old  Dolls 196 

Doll's  Furniture  from  the  Witch  House,   Salem, 

Massachusetts 201 

Interesting  Pieces  of  Dolls'  Furniture     ....  202 

A  Little  Bed  and  a  Sleigh-Front  Bureau  ....  205 

The  Littlest  Daughter's  Little  Chair 206 


COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 


COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

The  world  is  so  full  of  a  number  of  things 
I'm  sure  we  should  all  be  as  happy  as  kings. 

If  I  were  a  physician  prescribing  for  the  ills  of  body 
and  mind,  I  know  I  should  have  one  sovereign  rem- 
edy. Even  now,  as  a  layman,  I  present  my  panacea. 
If  you  are  dull,  if  you  are  unhappy,  if  you  are  bored 
—  collect !  It  gets  you  out  of  doors,  it  gets  you 
out  of  yourself,  and,  best  of  all,  if  you  do  it  intelli- 
gently, you  cannot  help  knowing  something  more 
about  the  world's  history  and  civilization.  You  are 
creating  a  background.  These  joys  have  been  mine, 
and  I  speak  as  one  having  authority  because,  through 
the  width  of  our  countryside,  I  am  now  known  as 

one  of  the  "antique  ladies."     The  other  is  L , 

and  together,  through  storm  and  sunshine,  along 
dusty  roads  and  up  unspeakably  muddy  lanes,  from 
sunrise  until  there  is  hardly  a  light  left  twinkling  in 
the  lonely  farmhouses,  we  have  followed  and  found 
our  treasures.  Of  course,  you  do  not  always  have 
to  go  so  far  afield;  even  in  our  little  country  town 
there  are  frequently  sales,  removals,  people  willing  to 
"part  with"  some  heirloom.     There  is,  for  instance. 


2  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

one  ancient  house  that  we  watch  with  quickened 
breath  every  time  we  pass  by,  for  local  legend  says 
that  in  it  is  a  walled-up  closet  of  old  blue  china. 
Years  ago  the  eccentric  owner  grew  tired  of  it,  and 
took  this  unique  way  of  ridding  her  mind  of  its  pres- 
ence. Now,  some  day,  that  house  is  going  to  be 
torn  down  and  take  its  eighteenth-century  pictur- 
esqueness  out  of  the  way  of  village  improvement;  and 
then  —  !  Already  our  imaginations  have  purchased 
countless  Staffordshire  platters  and  faintly  blue 
Nankin  teacups. 

My  little  country  town  is  also  a  college  town,  and, 
thirty  or  forty  years  ago,  when  old  furniture  was  in 
complete  disrepute,  I  have  no  doubt  that  wonder- 
ful "finds"  might  have  been  made  here.  Even  now, 
at  students'  sales,  —  apparently  it  is  not  seemly  for 
any  man  to  graduate  with  more  than  his  degree  and 
a  few  clothes,  —  I  have  known  two  charming  little 
tables,  one  an  inlaid  Hepplewhite,  the  other  a  rope- 
carved  Empire,  to  be  picked  up,  the  first  for  a  dollar, 
the  second  for  twenty-five  cents.  And  in  earlier 
generations,  when  Thomas  or  Henry  came  to  our 
"classic  college  halls,"  bearing  with  them  all  the 
family's  worst  furniture:  highboys  and  lowboys, 
block-front  chests  and  fiddle-back  chairs,  —  really, 
anything  from  the  attic  would  do  for  a  boy's  room, 
and  the  Mid- Victorian  plush  was  safe  in  the  best 
parlor,  —  what  the  Faculty  might  have  found  if  only 
they  had  known ! 


COLLECTOR'S  LUCK  3 

But  to  discover  heirlooms  and  want  most  earnestly 
to  get  them  is  n't  always  enough,  even  though  you 
have  a  distinct  *' flair"  for  such  things.  Patience 
also  is  necessary.  Way  back  on  the  hills,  near  a  blue 
little  sheltered  lake,  I  know  where  there  is  a  house  — 
a  barn,  too  —  cram-jam  full  of  old  things :  pink 
lustre,  brass,  and  pewter;  carved  chairs  and  a  claw- 
foot  sofa  hidden  from  envious  eyes  deep  down  in  the 
hay;  and  on  the  sitting-room  mantelpiece  a  lovely 
"proof"  Boston  Common  platter.  Cows  graze  plac- 
idly on  its  blue  surface,  and,  I  regret  to  say,  through 
the  open-work  of  the  china  edge  a  white  satin  ribbon 
runs  neatly  and  ties  on  one  side  in  a  preposterous 
rosette!  It  is  the  only  fitting  pendant  to  its  city 
cousin,  the  gilded  Barye  lion,  its  tail  pink-bowed, 
that  I  have  ever  seen.  And  sell  these  treasures.'^ 
Not  for  anything  that  the  owner  has  been  offered 
yet;  but  some  day  his  heirs  will,  and  that  is  why, 
like  Mrs.  Bofkin,  we  *'sit  and  watch  with  pious  pa- 
tience." And  there  is  the  funniest  old  lady  that  we 
have  met  on  our  "  antique-ing  "  trips.  She  is  the  pos- 
sessor of  a  maple  highboy,  nothing  unusual,  lack- 
ing brasses,  and  scrubbed  by  her  with  such  relentless 
neatness  that  the  surface  is  as  white  as  if  it  had  been 
scraped.  She  is  unpersuadable;  her  price  is  "a  hun- 
dred dollars,  no  more,  no  less,"  and  when  you  hint 
at  its  exaggeration  she  just  shakes  her  head  and  says, 
"Well,  it  can  set  a  while  longer.  The  critter  don't 
eat  nothin'!"     Nobody  will  ever  be  able  to  buy  it 


4  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

for  any  reasonable  sum;  but  the  experience  is  valu- 
able discipline  to  our  optimism. 

Now,  having  shown  you  the  far  enchantment  of 
our  hopes,  let  me  tell  you  of  some  of  our  actual 
"finds."  Unless  you  have  known  the  stimulating 
varieties  of  a  rural  auction,  it  may  be  hard  to  visualize 
for  you  the  happy  pleasure  of  it  all.  Our  North 
Country  is  so  beautiful  that  to  drive  through  it  is 
a  joy  all  by  itself:  to  see  its  rolling  foothills,  its 
blue  mountain  distances,  the  intervales  and  rounded 
knolls  that  look  as  if  some  giant  thing,  centuries 
ago,  had  folded  its  hands  and  then  lain  down  to  sleep, 
and  the  grass  had  grown  green  over  its  clasped 
fingers.  The  roads  themselves  are  "dusty  with  fes- 
tival"; you  follow  a  procession  of  all  kinds  of  ve- 
hicles, for  a  country  auction  is  a  neighborhood  en- 
tertainment;   everybody  goes.     It  was  in  just  this 

sort  of  setting  that  L bought  her  ten-cent  table. 

The  wood  is  old  black  cherry;  the  legs  are  straight 
and  grooved  like  some  of  the  later  Chippendale 
chairs,  and  the  drop-leaves,  when  they  are  raised, 
make  a  surface  over  three  feet  square.  At  each  end 
of  the  central  board  is  an  apron  carved  in  charming 
curves,  and  yet  this  valuable  piece  was  so  dingy  with 
time  and  disuse  —  it  had  apparently  been  shoved 
carelessly  into  an  outhouse  and  left  there  for  genera- 
tions —  that  nobody  wanted  it,  and  L 's  ten- 
cent  bid  was  left  undisputed.  It  is  in  the  process  of 
renovation,  and,  alas,  I  cannot  show  it  to  you  now, 


A  (liiiiiified  Sheraton  bureau  of  the  type  just  merg- 
ing into  the  Empire  feeling,  and  showing  wonderful 
wood-making.     It  cost  $15. 


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An  inlaid  Heppel- 
white  card-table  that 
cost  $15.  Its  mahog- 
any and  marquetry 
are  unusually  delicate. 
The  ShefiBeld  cake-bas- 
ket was  bid  in  for 


The  auctioneer  is  a  sensitive  soul ;  do 
not  irritate  him;  because  of  my  defer- 
ence, I  got  the  warming-pan  for  $1.20. 


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COLLECTOR'S  LUCK  7 

but  it  is  another  proof  of  my  theory  of  buying  by 
Hne. 

Here  I  want  to  present  and  insist  upon  another 
auction  theory  of  mine  —  never  offend  the  auction- 
eer! He  is  a  sensitive  soul,  full  of  the  pride  of  his 
profession,  and,  if  you  irritate  him,  by  some  subtle 
psychological  process,  he  will  make  the  crowd  go  on 
bidding.  I  don't  know  quite  how  he  does  it;  I  am 
merely  aware  that,  because  of  my  flattering  deference, 
an  excellently  engraved  warming-pan  was  dropped  for 
$L20  into  my  waiting  hands.  Moreover,  a  friendly 
auctioneer  will  always  send  you  advance  notices  of 
his  auctions;  no  small  assistance  to  the  collector  who 
depends  upon  scattering  village  sales. 

In  just  the  same  way  it  pays  to  be  friendly  to  the 
gathering  auction  crowd.  Not  only  the  reward  of 
virtue  but  of  "Collector's  Luck"  will  be  yours.  The 
people  will  tell  you  of  bargains,  they  may  even  sell 
you  some  of  their  own  possessions.  This  is  how 
L got  one  of  her  finest  pieces,  a  beautifully  in- 
laid Hepplewhite  card-table,  for  fifteen  dollars.  It 
is  mahogany  and  its  marquetry  is  so  delicate  and  di- 
verse that,  if  you  saw  it  in  a  city  shop  instead  of  way 
back  on  an  almost  forsaken  hillside,  you  would  com- 
pletely distrust  its  genuineness.  The  Sheffield  cake- 
basket  standing  on  it  is  another  token  of  our  auction 
energy,  for  it  is  in  very  good  condition  and  was  bid  in 
for  only  two  dollars. 

I  long  for  —  and  lack  —  time  and  space  to  describe 


8  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

more  minutely   all   our  captured   dreams:    L 's 

walnut  early  Georgian  mirror,  bought  in  a  little  Ver- 
mont village  for  five  dollars  and  probably  Eng- 
lish ;  my  black  cherry  Chippendale  chair  —  the  back 
is  especially  lovely  —  that  cost  me,  in  a  little  city 

shop,  fourteen  dollars;    G 's  dignified  Sheraton 

bureau  (on  page  5) ,  —  fifteen  was  its  price,  —  the  type 
just  merging  into  the  Empire  feeling,  and  showing 

wonderful   woodmarking;     and   H 's  entrancing 

helmet  creamer  —  well,  this  I'll  have  to  stop  and  tell 
you  about. 

We  had  walked,  H and  I,  a  pleasant  pair  of 

miles  to  the  little  "store"  of  a  man  who  joined  the 
trades  of  harness-maker  and  jockey  and  antique 
dealer  all  in  one  personality.  Sometimes  you  found 
treasures  there,  and  why,  knowing  this,  I  stopped  at 
his  gate  to  look  back  I  have  never  known,  except 
that  the  world  was  so  very  lovely.  Nature  had 
sat  at  ease  in  her  fields  that  day  and  splashed  her 
hillside  canvasses   with   lavish   color;   and  while   I, 

luckless,  gazed  at  the  crimsons  and  golds,   H 

walked  in  and  bought  the  helmet  creamer  with  its 
quaint   blue   and   gilt   bands   for   thirty-five   cents. 

Then  I  said  severely,  quoting  my  Emerson,  "H , 

*  Things  are  of  the  snake!'"  I  shouldn't  have 
minded  twenty-five  cents  or  fifty,  but,  somehow, 
thirty -five  seems  so  improbable!  In  this  game  of 
mine  hesitation  means  nearly  always  being  lost, 
you  know.     Frankly,  I  believe  in  "Collector's Luck" 


+■" 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Carleton. 


The  black  cherry  Chip- 
pendale chair  that  was 
bought  for  $14  in  a  little 
city  shop. 


This  early  Georgian  wal- 
nut mirror  was  bought  in  a 
little  Vermont  village  for  $5. 


From  the  nutli.,,-'^  mlhrti,, 


I    Collection  of  Mrs.  Frost. 


This  fine  sofa,  of  a  type  usually  called  Chippendale,  probably  dates 
somewhere  in  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  is  over  six 
feet  long  with  a  wide  curving  back  and  gracious  arms. 


COLLECTOR'S  LUCK  11 

very  strongly,  but  one  way  of  my  belief  is  that  you 
must  never  neglect  an  opportunity,  that  every  clue 
is  worth  following,  every  auction  worth  attending  for 
the  sake  of  the  possible  prize  that  may  be  there. 
A  certain  energy  of  pursuit  is  necessary.  That 
accounts  for  one  of  the  finest  sofas  I  have  ever  seen 
coming  back  into  the  possession  of  the  original  own- 
ers. It  is  over  seven  feet  long,  and  very  wide,  with 
high,  curving  back  and  gracious  arms,  of  a  type 
usually  called  Chippendale,  —  the  legs  are  straight 
and  slightly  grooved  and  quite  unlike  the  later  Sher- 
aton, —  and  it  probably  dates  somewhere  in  the  sec- 
ond half  of  the  eighteenth  century.  But  for  all  its 
loveliness  it  fell  upon  evil  Victorian  days,  and  was 
given  away  to  the  local  hospital.  There  it  stayed,  at 
one  end  of  the  upper  corridor,  covered  with  a  con- 
cealing linen  slip,  and  sat  upon  by  countless  unsus- 
pecting collectors,  —  I,  myself,  was  one  of  them,  — 
until  it  grew  rickety  and  was  thrust  away  out  of 
sight  in  one  corner  of  the  attic.  My  friend,  who 
had  always  longed  for  it  and  laid  plans  for  its  cap- 
ture, had  no  further  need  to  think  of  herself  as  a 
potential  Indian  giver;  she  asked  if  she  might  buy 
back  her  father's  gift,  and  the  hospital  authorities  pre- 
sented her  with  it,  freely.  Now  it  stands  before  her 
drawing-room  fire,  the  earnest  of  her  constant,  un- 
failing hope  that  some  day  it  would  be  hers. 

Next  comes  my  most  amazing  "luck"  story,  and, 
logically,  I  should  save  its  dramatic  thrill  for  a  fitting 


U  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

climax,  but  I  can't  wait.     It  really  is  L 's  tale, 

but  I  always  have  the  fun  of  telling  it  because  she  is 
modest.  I  want  you  all  to  take  Frances  Morse's 
"  Furniture  of  the  Olden  Time  "  —  I  feel  as  if  I  were  a 
school-teacher  —  and  turn  to  page  243.  Look  at  the 
illustration  opposite  carefully,  for  this  is  the  table 
I  am  going  to  talk  about,  and,  besides,  it  is  the  most 
beautiful  piece  of  Empire  furniture  that  I  have  ever 
seen.  Neither  my  photograph  nor  that  in  the  book 
does  justice  to  the  excellence  of  the  carving.     Some 

time  ago  L showed  this  picture  to  our  favorite 

dealer,  and  said,  "I  want  you  to  get  me  a  table  like 
this  some  day."  He  promised  —  he  is  always  oblig- 
ing —  but  I  don't  think  he  thought  it  a  probable  pur- 
chase, for  such  tables  are  rare.  Months  later  he 
telephoned  that  he  had  found  one  that  he  thought 
very  similar  in  design  and  asked  her  to  come  down 
and  see  it;  but  it  was  not  until  they  had  examined 
it  together  and  looked  over  the  bill  of  sale,  dated  at 
Worcester  and  signed  Mrs.  John  Smith,  —  you  will 
notice  that  Frances  Morse's  text  describes  this  table 
as  owned  by  John  Smith,  Esq.,  of  Worcester,  —  that 

they  discovered  it  to  be  the  identical  table  L 

had  pointed  out  in  the  book.  Wasn't  that  an  ex- 
traordinary coincidence?  Our  dealer  had  found  it 
quite  by  chance,  while  hunting  up  a  sideboard,  and 
had  bought  it  from  the  widow  of  its  former  owner.  It 
really  makes  me  think  that,  if  people  will  just  want 
anything  in  the  world  enough  and  in  the  right  way, 


^H^^^^3^H 

^^1 

P-  ^^^B 

t:       ^  ''^PiiiMBBB    1 

r^^ 

^P^^^S 

^ 

pB|^ 

MBB 

j^^^f^         ■  '«^ 

i 

^ 

Collection  of  Mrs.  Carleton. 

That  lovely  Empire  table:  a  symbol  of  collector's  luck 
raised  to  the  nth  power. 


The  final  wreck  of  the 
home  that  has  sheltered 
generations  must  of  itself 
be  sad — sad  in  this  sym- 
bol of  change,  at  least. 


Once  again  I  wish  my- 
self rich  that  I  might  buy 
the  old  place  back  for 
them,  and  give  them  all 
the  things  they  have 
wanted  and  never  got. 


COLLECTOR'S  LUCK  15 

they  will  surely  get  it.     I  am  wishing  all  of  you 
limitless  faith! 

And  I  am  wishing  you,  also,  infinite  sympathy. 
These  joyous  quests  of  mine  are  not  always  gayly 
colored,  you  see,  for  they  are  woven  out  of  the  fabric 
of  life  itself.  An  auction  can  be  very  pathetic;  the 
breaking  up,  the  final  wrecking  of  the  home  that  has 
sheltered  generations,  where  little  children  have  lived 
and  played  and  laughed,  must  of  itself  be  sad;  sad  in 
the  symbol  of  change,  at  least.  And,  sometimes,  the 
people  are  so  very,  very  poor;  old  bent  women  and 
stooped  old  men ;  for  years  they  have  struggled  with 
farm-lands  barren  as  their  lives,  and  hoped  so  to  keep 
things  together!  I  am  thinking  of  two  such  cases 
now.  Once  again  I  wish  myself  rich  that  I  might 
buy  the  old  place  back  for  them,  and  give  them  a 
Ford  and  a  Victrola  and  all  the  things  they've 
wanted  and  never  got.  And,  then,  magically,  the 
pattern  of  my  imagination  changes  to  a  happier 
color,  and  I  remember  the  tale  of  the  friend  of  a 
friend,  an  "antique"  emotionalist  like  myself.  I 
hope  most  earnestly  to  meet  her  some  day ;  we  would 
have  so  much  in  common.  Now,  not  knowing  her, 
I  still  can  tell  the  story  with  admiring  freedom.  My 
friend's  friend  had  gone  to  a  hillside  farmhouse  in 
search  of  a  platter  famous  throughout  the  neighbor- 
hood. It  proved  even  lovelier  than  she  had  expected : 
its  blue  the  deep,  intense  tone  that  old  Staffordshire 
alone  possesses.     Her  whole  collecting  heart  went  out 


16  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

to  it,  and  her  modest  tentative  offer  soon  reached  im- 
moderation. But  still  the  owner  refused  to  sell  it. 
At  last,  in  desperation,  the  friend  of  my  friend  said, 
"Have  I  nothing  to  offer  that  would  induce  you  to 
let  me  have  it.^^" 

Immediately  the  reply  came,  "Yes,  ma'am,  that 
skirt  you've  got  on  now." 

"It's  yours, "answered  my  friend's  friend,  promptly 
stepping  out  of  it.  And  she  always  adds  when  she 
tells  the  story,  "And  my  good-fortune  stayed  with 
me  for  I  had  on  a  black  taffeta  petticoat!" 


II 

STENCILED  FURNITURE 

Were  you  ever  lucky  like  me,  do  you  think? 
Did  you  ever  find  a  set  of  stenciled  chairs,  softly 
brown  and  glowing  with  gold  pomegranates  and 
formalized  flowers,  and  all  six  for  six  dollars?  I  did, 
and  ever  since  then  I  have  been  wanting  to  tell  you 
what  can  be  done  with  stenciled  furniture  —  old  sten- 
cils when  you  can  get  them,  new  when  you  can't;  for 
very  few  people  know  at  all  the  charm  of  this  quaint, 
early-nineteenth-century  type,  the  far-away  country 
cousin  of  the  wonderful,  long-ago  oriental  lacquer. 
Besides,  in  the  late  eighteenth  century,  Angelica  Kauf- 
mann,  Pergolesi,  and  Cipriani,  all  painters  of  great 
vogue,  worked  for  Robert  and  James  Adam  and  deco- 
rated the  furniture  that  these  masters  designed.  If 
you  have  read  "Quinney's,"  I  am  sure  you  have  not 
forgotten  the  tragic  affair  of  the  satinwood  commode 
with  panels  painted  by  the  charming  Angelica,  and 
Jo's  despair  at  its  loss.  In  the  reign  of  Louis  XV, 
Martin,  the  famous  French  coach-painter,  perfected 
his  marvelous  process  of  enamels  now  known  as 
vernis- Martin,  and  even  from  mediaeval  days  cer- 
tain pieces  of  mobiliary  furniture  have  been  adorned 
and  embellished  by  the  addition  of  vivid  color  like 
the  "sapphire,  pearl  and  rich  embroidery"  that 
Shakespeare  pictures  as  buckling  below  the  bending 


18  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

knee  of  fair  knighthood.  From  these  dignified  dy- 
nasties my  simple  stencils  can  claim  only  distant  de- 
scent, and  yet  they  are  so  attractive,  so  full  of  vigor 
and  stamina  and  with  such  wonderful  decorative 
possibilities,  that  I  am  sure  you  will  love  them  as  I  do, 
once  you  know  them.  I  cannot  think  of  a  better 
way  to  bring  tone  and  the  quality  of  color  into  a  room 
than  by  their  use. 

I  am  going  to  begin  by  walking  directly  to  my  side- 
board, and  taking  down  my  little  canister,  black- 
surfaced,  straight-lined,  and  not  more  than  five 
inches  in  height,  but,  oh,  so  delightful!  It  has  two 
compartments,  one  for  green  tea,  one  for  black,  and 
a  tiny  lock,  for,  in  those  thrifty  days,  our  ancestors 
had  to  be  very  careful  indeed  of  their  precious  Oolong 
and  Japan.  A  brass  lion's  head  forms  the  handle, 
thus  marking  it  beyond  doubt  as  belonging  to  the  full 
Empire  period;  and  the  stencil  itself  makes  me  think 
of  the  old  nursery  rhyme  about  the  nut  tree  "that 
would  nothing  bear  but  a  silver  apple  and  a  golden 
pear"  —  my  design  in  silvers  and  golds  precisely. 
Why,  I  am  almost  daily  expecting  a  visit  from  the 
Queen  of  Spain's  daughter  "all  on  account  of  my 
little  nut  tree."  And  my  tea-caddy  has  something 
more  than  quaint  charm  to  recommend  it;  the  color- 
scheme  of  golds  and  silvers  has  the  merit  of  binding 
together  the  pewter  on  my  sideboard  and  the  brass 
on  the  table  beyond. 

On  my  dining-table  is  another  interesting  piece. 


HiJuuiUUtiiuiiwoiiittiiiiiiiO'iHiiiiiuioiiiimmijaiiwiuiiaiuiJiiimiaiimtiiimaiiiuiiimoiumiimaiiuimiui:^^ 


A   stent  ilcd   tea  caddy  owned  by  the 
author.  A  lions  head  forms  the  handle. 


Tray  with  original  stenciling. 

Collection  of  Mrs.  Carleton. 


iHnmiiiiiiiifliiimiiiiiiniiiMiinmniii 


Stenciled  fruit-dish  in   blues  and  roses,  with  gold  and 
silver  arabesques.     From  the  collection   of  the  author. 


STENCILED  FURNITURE  21 

this  time  combining  more  colors.  The  background 
is  black,  the  heavy,  japanned  black  that  takes  long 
years  and  rough  usage  to  wear  away;  on  the  four 
curved-over  edges  are  alternate  designs  of  blue  and 
rose  conventionalized  flowers  set  in  a  wreath  pattern 
of  gilt  and  silver,  and  the  stencil  on  the  bottom  is 
plain  gold.  It  is  quite  twelve  inches  wide  and  the 
photograph  gives  no  real  idea  of  its  capacity,  for  it 
will  hold  nearly  a  dozen  smallish  oranges.  It  is  in 
almost  "proof"  condition;  the  colors  are  merely 
dulled  by  time,  not  rubbed  away,  and  because  there 
are  so  many  combinations  of  tone  in  it,  it  makes  a 
most  admirable  fruit-dish,  harmonizing  with  any- 
thing: oranges,  golden-red  plums,  or  crimson-hued 
peaches  and  apples.  Many  such  dishes  are  still  to 
be  found  through  the  countryside;  sometimes  the 
design  is  completely  worn  away,  in  which  case  a  piece 
of  this  kind  seems  to  me  practically  worthless,  and  I 
should  not  advise  redecoration.  At  other  times,  the 
colors  are  warm  and  glowing;  desirable  bits  to  be 
picked  up  both  for  decoration  and  actual  use. 

I  wish  that  I  could  show  you  the  stencil  on  the 
columns  and  cornice  of  my  Empire  clock,  but  it  is  so 
dim  that,  although  the  effect  is  yet  very  pleasing  to  the 
eye,  any  adequate  reproduction  is  impossible.  Still, 
bear  my  counsel  in  mind,  and,  if  you  ever  find  a  clock 
with  stenciled  pillars  and  cornice,  remember  that  it  is 
worth  buying. 

I  have  chosen  four  standard  types  of  chairs  to  show 


22  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

you,  all  excellent  of  their  kind.  The  first  has  a  charm- 
ing decoration  of  gold,  with  little,  naive  flecks  of 
green  and  red  picking  out  the  pattern;  an  unusual 
touch  conies  in  the  turning  and  stenciling  of  the  brace, 
and,  most  valuable  point  of  all,  there  is  a  lion's  head 
inset  like  a  medallion  in  the  top  of  the  back.  The 
seat  is  round,  another  excellence.  Altogether,  it  is 
one  of  the  most  desirable  stenciled  chairs  that  I 
have  ever  seen.  The  design  when  it  was  found  was 
so  dulled  that  it  had  to  be  done  over,  but  the  repro- 
duction has  not  a  flaw.  The  next  chair  is  completely 
old  —  you  will  see  that  the  stencil  is  dimmer  —  but 
the  gold  fruit  and  flowers  on  the  black  background 
are  very  agreeable  to  look  at.  The  seat  is  the  square 
rush,  more  common  than  the  rounded  one,  but  still 
well  worth  while.  The  third  chair  is  the  most  deli- 
cately shaped  of  all;  notice  how  charmingly  turned 
the  legs  and  brace  are.  You  will  see,  too,  that  the 
finish  is  light;  in  this  resembling  the  Adam  style  in 
satinwood,  and  the  decoration,  redone  twenty  years 
ago,  is  formed  by  clusters  of  golden  grapes.  The 
fourth  chair  has  been  restenciled  recently,  but  in 
shape  is  the  style  of  rocking-chair  that  was  made  be- 
tween 1820  and  1830,  as  both  the  form  of  the  rockers 
and  the  inset  cane-seat  indicate.  Cane  was  used  for 
seating  the  later  types,  and,  while  rush  is  prefer- 
able to  anything  else,  I  have  frequently  found  such 
chairs  with  splint  bottoms. 

Trays  you  will  find  almost  as  often  as  chairs,  and 


XtiMiiniNiiiutiiitMMiiiaiinniiiiuciiMriuriiiiuniMiniiiiciiiiiiinuMCiiMHiiiuNnuiiiiiiHMDiiiiiiiiiiJiciniiNniinniiiiHinMitiimriiiimniiMi^ 

A   GROUP  OF    INTERESTING    STENCIL  TRAYS 


STENCILED   FURNITURE  25 

they  vary  from  small  ones,  such  as  are  shown  in  the 
photograph  grouping  four  together,  to  great  salvers, 
very  useful  and  very  decorative.  Sometimes  the 
trays  have  an  irregular,  fluted,  "pie-crust"  edge 
like  the  two  on  either  side  of  the  large  tray.  The 
upper  one  is  more  of  the  usual  shape,  but  it  is  re- 
deemed by  the  brilliance  of  its  decoration,  a  bird  of 
paradise  nestling  in  unknown  and  luxuriant  flowers. 
The  large  tray  (on  page  19)  is  a  beautiful  one;  of 
most  unusual  design,  too,  with  vivid  flowers  on  gold 
bands  that  glow  with  a  happy  radiance.  I  wonder 
if  you   will  like   the   one  with  the  swans  as  much 

as  I  do?     And  G has  another  just  like  it,  only 

bigger.  Frankly,  I  think  it  is  lovely.  I  find  myself 
envying  the  fortunate  bride  who  went  to  house- 
keeping somewhere  in  the  early  eighteen-hundreds 
with  these  charming  trays  to  keep  her  company. 
There  must  have  been  three  of  them  at  first,  — 
"nests"  of  trays  they  were  called,  —  and  how  I  wish 
I  could  find  that  other  wandering  lost  one!  Those 
dear,  queer,  conventional  swans  on  a  blue  pond  in 
front  of  a  little  thatched  cottage !  If  you  could  look 
at  the  trays  themselves,  you  would  see  that  the  win- 
dows have  the  tiny  panes  that  such  a  cottage  should 
have,  and  that  immense  sunflowers  form  a  floral  back- 
ground. 

"Gorgeous"  is  the  adjective  that  was  meant  to 
describe  the  next  tray.  It  is  perfectly  preserved;  it 
might  have  been  finished  an  hour  ago  as  it  stands 


26  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

there  in  its  fresh  black  and  gold  livery,  except  that 
they  do  not  make  such  lovely  things  nowadays.  It  be- 
longed to  the  great-grandmother  of  a  friend  of  mine, 
and  her  descendant,  owning  it,  is  a  happy  woman. 
The  w^ay  the  stencil  is  applied,  covering  as  it  does 
nearly  the  whole  surface,  adds  to  its  rarity. 

I  thought  it  the  most  attractive  one  I  had  ever 

seen  until  D and  I  found  this  lovely  last  one 

(on  page  28)  in  a  little  dingy  antique  shop  where 
treasures  are  often  to  be  picked  up.  I  didn't  be- 
lieve that  such  things  existed,  and  I  stood  hold- 
ing it  in  my  hands  and  wondering.  To  begin  with, 
it  is  very  large,  its  oval  shape  is  quite  uncommon, 
and,  best  of  all,  it  has  a  stenciled  rim.  There  is 
not  an  imperfection  in  it,  and  the  colors  are  simply 
exquisite,  browns  —  I  never  saw  a  brown  tray  before 
—  decorated  in  golds  with  little  touches  of  crimson. 
It  is  a  piece  to  marvel  at,  almost  to  worship. 

All  through  my  descriptions  I  have  said  "sten- 
ciled," not  "painted"  furniture,  and  with  the  best  of 
reasons  back  of  my  statement,  because  the  early 
nineteenth-century  pieces,  these  honest,  sturdy  chairs 
and  trays  and  dishes,  were  decorated  by  the  process 
of  stenciling.  I  have  seen  just  one  painted  tray, 
interesting  because  it  interprets  so  primitively  the 
story  of  Jacob  and  Rebecca,  but  nowhere  nearly  so 
attractive  or  artistically  good  as  the  ones  with  the 
formalized  patterns.  I  do  wish  the  modern  decora- 
tors would  return  to  the  good  old  paths.     Now  the 


,l,'"    """ 


Black-and-gold  stenciled  tray.     Collection  of  Mrs.  Woods. 


rMMMtiKMiiMiMcjiwimiiKiMmitNiaiMiwiiiiaMiiiiiiiiiuwilliimicxiHil uiiilliiiHiiunwwutiaiimmiiiiqmiiiiHincjiiMliMmiCMiiHiiiMaililiiiimiailHiimmuitmmiiiiunmmiliiCMMiiliHiai 


rnimimiiinilimimliaimmlimomrimiliitjlllllliiitiltlirilMmiiiljmmiliiilumrmimiiimimiiiiiniitiiimiNi 


The  finest  tray  I  have  ever  .seen,  with  the  rim  as  well  as  the  tray 
surface  stenciled.      Collection  of  Mrs.  Carr. 


STENCILED   FURNITURE  «9: 

process  is  free-hand,  though  sometimes  the  design 
is  traced  on  oiled  paper,  then  filled  in  with  chalk  and 
so  transferred  to  a  chair-back  that  way.  Twentieth- 
century  painted  furniture  is  often  pretty,  but  it 
rarely  suggests  the  "feeling"  of  a  hundred  years  ago. 
In  mid -August  it  was  my  privilege  to  talk  to  a  man 
who  has  spent  nearly  all  his  life  —  and  he  is  ninety- 
one  years  old  —  in  decorating  furniture,  and  who 
probably  knows  more  about  it  than  any  other  living 
soul.  Shall  I  ever  forget  the  day  of  my  pilgrimage? 
He  lived  miles  away;  the  "noonday  stood  still  for 
heat,"  and  the  road  stretched,  a  dusty  ribbon,  ahead 
of  me.  And  then  at  last  the  little  welcoming  white 
cottage,  smaller  than  mine,  and  older,  for  it  dates 
back  to  1768.  Even  the  green -latticed  sheds  built 
long  out  at  the  side  looked  as  if,  friendly,  they  had 
caught  hold  of  hands  with  the  house,  and  were  run- 
ning down  the  little  slope  to  meet  me.  It  was  cool, 
so  cool,  inside,  so  pleasant  to  sit  there  with  Mr.  In- 
galls  —  he  is  the  "rosy -apple"  type  of  old  man  — 
and  discuss  stencils  while  the  day  blazed  outside. 
When  he  was  a  lad  he  had  learned  the  trade  from  his 
father  who  was  a  coach-painter,  and  at  that  time  they 
worked  entirely  with  stencils;  he  remembered  the 
piles  that  used  to  lie  in  his  father's  shop.  Little  by 
little  they  were  broken  and  destroyed,  and  at  last 
the  old  order  changed  for  something  different  and 
not  so  intrinsically  good.  Nobody  works  with  sten- 
cils now;   the  color  has  remained  but  the  "feeling," 


30  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

the  "soul,"  has  vanished.  Still,  I  think  it  is  a  craft 
that  could  as  well  be  revived  as  the  weaving  of 
blankets  and  coverlets  and  rugs.^ 

Perhaps,  all  this  time,  you  are  thinking,  "But, 
nevertheless,  it  is  just  peasant  furniture,  the  product 
of  homely  workmanship."  And  so  it  is,  and  it  would 
be  more  wonderful,  undoubtedly,  to  own  a  splendid, 
authentic  bit  of  vernis -Martin,  or  such  a  red-lacquer 
cabinet  as  Anne  Douglas  Sedgwick  describes  in  her 
delicately  modulated  "  White  Pagoda ."  And  yet  I  am 
thinking  that  so  many  of  you  must  be,  like  me,  living 
in  "middling"  houses  on  "middling"  incomes,  and 
wanting  things  pretty  —  and  real !  Fancy  how  charm- 
ing you  could  make  a  cold,  north-exposed  breakfast- 
room  with  the  yellow  glitter  of  brass,  warm  brownish 
walls,  and  gold-brown  stenciled  furniture  weaving  the 
colors  together  into  a  unit  of  comfort.  Or  think  of 
the  appropriate  prettiness  of  sprigged  china  and  pink 
lustre  on  an  old  tea-tray,  its  tones  as  exquisitely  mel- 
lowed as  theirs.  Remember,  too,  that  "the  love  of 
the  genuine  is  a  very  healthy  human  instinct."  I 
know  nothing  that  has  more  of  this  quality  than  the 
simple,  honest,  unpretending  stenciled  furniture  of 
the  early  nineteenth  century. 

*  Fortunately,  the  craft  is  being  revived. 


Ill 

PRESSED  GLASSWARE 

Perhaps  if  I  hadn't  bought  my  "five-cent  sugar- 
bowls"  at  that  Vermont  auction  I  never  would  have 
begun  to  collect  pressed  glass,  and  so  become  in- 
terested in  one  of  the  most  genuine,  attractive  — 
a  little  naive,  too  —  American  industries  of  the  early 
nineteenth  century.  And  then  this  article  would 
never  have  been  written,  for,  you  see,  I  had  n't  in- 
tended to  buy  them  at  all.  What  my  soul  was  crav- 
ing was  a  delicate  Spode  cup  lying  all  unnoticed 
among  the  rubbish  of  an  "odd  lot."  Apparently  I 
was  its  sole  discoverer;  when  it  was  put  up  for  sale, 
I  said  "five  cents,"  not  another  bid  was  made,  and 
as  I  stopped  to  examine  my  china  treasure,  I  found 
that  I  had  been  even  luckier  than  I  thought,  for  the 
two  quaint  sugar-bowls  were  oddly  charming,  and 
grew  more  so  every  time  I  looked  at  them. 

My  white  glass  candlesticks  (on  page  33)  came 
next  in  order  of  purchase.  Discovered  at  a  little  hill- 
side auction  in  New  Hampshire,  I  bought  them  for 
a  dollar  and  a  half.  I  have  never  seen  any  quite 
like  this  pair,  with  their  clear,  white  curves,  rounding 
bases,  and  pewter  sockets  to  hold  the  candles,  the  last 
a  most  unusual  touch.  Now  they  stand  on  my  Em- 
pire sideboard,  just  the  right  lighting  arrangement, 
for  the  silverish  sockets  are  in  tone  with  the  pewter 


32  COLLECTOR'S   LUCK 

on  the  wide  mahogany  top,  and  the  glass  matches  the 
pressed  handles  of  the  sideboard.  The  dolphin 
candlesticks  —  a  much  more  recent  acquisition  — 
are  an  even  stronger  Empire  note,  for  you  must 
remember  that  the  Empire  period  meant  the  revi- 
val of  antiquity  in  furniture,  and  that  the  dolphin 
was  used  as  a  constant  classic  symbol  in  decoration. 
These  candlesticks  are  not  white,  but  as  yellow  as  if 
they  had  been  cut  from  a  block  of  clear  amber;  and  if 
you  are  gracious  enough  to  recall  the  color-scheme 
of  my  dining-room,  you  will  realize  how  harmonious 
they  must  be  on  the  mantelpiece  against  that  gray- 
greeny-brown  background. 

But,  even  after  my  first  candlesticks,  I  don't  think 
I  quite  took  my  glass-collecting  as  a  serious  art,  a 
quest  to  scour  the  countryside  for,  until  in  a  little, 
old  attic,  hidden  away  in  a  dusty  blue  bowl,  I  found 
three  "Benjamin  Franklin"  cup-plates.  I  knew  that 
they  were  cup-plates  because  they  were  just  the  same 
shape  and  size  as  the  dark-blue  "Cadmus"  design, 
which  a  dealer  had  just  told  me  was  worth  twenty- 
five  dollars.  But  that  these  odd  little  glass  plates, 
which  our  prudent  grandmothers  used  to  set  their 
cups  in  when  they  drank  their  tea  from  the  saucers, 
had  any  particular  value,  I  was  utterly  unaware. 
Remember,  I  was  very  young  at  the  game,  and  when 
they  were  offered  to  me  at  ten  cents  apiece,  why,  I 
took  them.  No,  my  conscience  does  n't  prick  me  a 
bit;   I  was  a  mere  child  at  collecting  in  those  days. 


The  two  sugar  bowls  were  thrown  in  with  a  five-cent  teacup  at  an  auction. 
Several  of  the  other  pieces  show  classic  decoration. 


Rare  pressed-glass  caudlej^ticks.  The  two  outer  ones  are  white 
glass  with  pewter  sockets,  the  other  two,  in  the  dolphin  design,  are 
made  of  amber  glass.     Both  groups  from  the  author's  collection. 


t  iNwiiuiHDiiuiiiiHiioiuuiiiiffliiniuiiiinintiiiiiiiiiiiaiimwnutiiiHuiiinioiiiiininiitiMiiHiiiiiKiiMuitiuHniuiiiiiiiiKiiiiiiriiininiHiinimin 


Stamped  Eagle,  Unstamped  Eagle,  Fort  Meigs,  Log  Cabin. 


i      Log  Cabin  with  Cider  Barrel  and  Flag,  Benjamin  Harrison,  Henry  Clay. 


Bunker  Hill  with  draped  border.  Bunker  Hill  (plain)  with  braided 
border.  Bunker  Hill  with  braided  border. 


The  Benjamin  Franklin,  Chancellor  Livingston,  Ship  Cadmus. 


HISTORIC   CUP-PLATES 

From  the  author's  collection. 


PRESSED   GLASSWARE  35 

And  then,  by  some  chance,  I  ran  across  Edwin  A.  Bar- 
ber's book  on  "American  Glassware,"  and  found  that 
my  "Benjamin  Frankhns"  were  among  the  rarest  of  a 
lot  of  historical  cup-plates.  Let  me  quote  this  great 
authority  directly:  "These  interesting  little  objects 
were  pressed  in  metal  moulds  by  means  of  a  plunger. 
It  is  believed  that  they  were  made  in  England  since 
we  have  no  knowledge  that  pressed-glass  designs  of 
this  character  were  produced  so  early  in  this  country." 
Then  followed  a  long  list,  and  my  fired  ambition  made 
me  unable  to  rest  until  1,  too,  owned  all  these  cup- 
plates. 

Sit  down  beside  me  on  the  sofa,  won't  you,  and  let 
me  tell  you  about  them  in  their  order;  for  "these  in- 
teresting little  objects,"  as  Professor  Barber  calls 
them,  collected  here  and  there  through  Vermont  and 
New  Hampshire  and  Massachusetts,  and  costing, 
perhaps,  ten  or  twelve  dollars,  are  worth  to-day  fifty 
by  a  dealer's  estimate. 

I  am  beginning  with  the  "Stamped  Eagle,"  be- 
cause it  is  the  oldest  cup-plate  of  all,  dated  —  you 
can  see  the  figures  faintly  —  1831.  A  shield  is  em- 
bossed on  the  eagle's  breast,  and  overhead  is  a  circle 
of  stars,  the  border  being  a  conventional  leaf  and 
fleur-de-lis  design.  The  "Unstamped  Eagle"  comes 
next,  set  in  a  scroll  border,  and  clasping  defiant  ar- 
rows; you  almost  expect  to  find  the  militant  "E  Plu- 
ribus  Unum"  stamped  underneath  as  you  frequently 
see  it  in  the  bureau  brasses.     I  am  particularly  proud 


36  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

of  this  cup-plate  because  I  have  never  seen  it  in  any 
collection  but  my  own,  and  I  think  it  is  undoubt- 
edly rare.  My  third  trophy,  acorn-bordered,  bears 
as  central  design  a  solidly  square  log-cabin,  with  the 
words  "Tippecanoe"  and  "Fort  Meigs"  printed 
above  it. 

The  next  cup-plate  —  usually  described  by  dealers 
and  catalogues  as  "The  Log  Cabin  with  the  Flag  and 
Cider  Barrell"  —  is  my  most  cherished  little  dish, 
probably  because  it  was  so  hard  to  get  and  eluded  me 
so  long.  I  had  pursued  its  veriest  shadow,  and,  for 
an  eternity,  the  most  tangible  evidence  that  I  could 
find  that  it  existed  for  me  was  one  with  a  nibble  as 
large  as  the  Hatter  made  in  his  teacup,  bitten  out 
at  the  edge.  And  then  I  saw  it  advertised  in  Lib- 
bie's  auction-list,  and  I  shaped  my  life  accordingly. 
It  was  the  last  day  of  the  sale,  and  I  hurried  through 
a  luncheon-party,  I  gave  up  the  gilded  chance  of 
hearing  Yvette  Guilbert  sing  her  "Noels,"  and  I  sat 
and  sat  in  that  crowded  auction-room  until  my 
blessed  cup-plate  was  announced.  For  me  the  mean- 
time is  a  blank;  Syntax  plates  and  Bennington  dogs, 
even  Sunderland  lustre  creamers,  passed  unnoticed. 
If  any  of  you  ever  saw  that  engaging  French  farce 
done  over  into  a  musical  comedy  and  called  "The 
Pink  Lady,"  —  saw  and  recall  the  part  where  M.  Don- 
diddier,  the  antique  dealer,  is  told  that  the  twentieth 
snuff-box  has  been  found,  —  you  will  understand 
my  emotions.     They  were  as  his  when  the  missing 


PRESSED   GLASSWARE  37 

cup-plate  was  put  into  my  trembling  hands.  And  I 
have  a  curious  theory  about  this  piece.  I  think  that 
it  may  have  been  "made  in  America,"  for  a  rubbing 
from  a  medal  on  the  fly-leaf  of  an  old  school-book 
shows  precisely  the  same  design,  and  the  inscription 
above  reads  "Free  Soil  School,"  below  "The  Hero  of 
Tippecanoe."  I  think,  too,  that  it  must  have  been  a 
characteristic  American  illustration  of  the  time.  A 
logical  fifth  is  the  "Hero"  himself,  a  profile  portrait 
of  Harrison,  with  the  date  of  his  birth,  1773,  and  the 
date  of  his  presidency,  1841.  Henry  Clay  is  on  the 
sixth  cup-plate;  a  small  head  with  a  much  more 
elaborated  border  than  most  of  these  patterns  show, 
and,  as  it  has  been  said,  the  head  might  be  almost 
anybody,  Julius  Caesar,  for  instance,  it  is  so  con- 
ventionally classical. 

The  row  below  shows  at  the  right  the  three  Bunker 
Hill  plates;  all  more  or  less  alike  to  the  layman,  all 
blessedly  different  to  the  collector,  and  one  of  them, 
the  third,  remarkably  hard  to  get.  The  first  three 
are  my  cherished  ships;  two  those  early  "Walk-in- 
the- Water"  boats,  the  Benjamin  Franklin  and  the 
Chancellor  Livingston.  They  were  among  the 
first  Hudson  River  steamers;  do  you  suppose  it  was 
that  same  Franklin  that  was  "snagged  at  St.  Gene- 
vieve in  1822".'^  The  Chancellor  Livingston,  named 
for  one  of  the  drafters  of  the  Constitution,  a  thor- 
ough-going friend  and  patron  of  Fulton  in  his  navi- 
gation projects,  is  shown,  also,  by  Enoch  Wood  on 


38  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

one  of  his  blue  platters,  but  I  like  mine  better.  As 
it  sails  to  its  horizon  of  stars  and  hearts  it  is  the 
statelier  ship.  The  last  of  these  cup-plates  is  called 
the  "Cadmus";  why,  I  do  not  know.*  Like  Henry 
Clay,  it  might  be  anything. 

The  other  four  are  not  in  any  sense  historical, 
but  I  am  showing  them  to  you  because  they  are  such 
standard  patterns;  the  Valentine  and  the  Butterfly 
being  particularly  well  known.  Of  the  leaf -border 
design  I  have  six,  and  let  me  give  you  a  hint  if  you, 
too,  have  half  a  dozen.  They  make  the  most  at- 
tractive individual  almond  dishes  in  the  world. 

And  mine  are  all  in  the  white  glass,  a  fairly  wise 
limiting,  you  see,  for  these  cup-plates  are  also  made  in 
deep  sapphire  blues,  emerald  greens,  topaz  yellows, 
and,  to  continue  this  jeweled  comparison,  opal-hued 
effects.  But  while  such  variety  is  excellent  as  show- 
ing range,  and  most  desirable  in  a  museum,  I  really 
think  the  white  more  charming  for  intimate  and  pri- 
vate use.  Yet,  as  I  write  with  such  composure,  I 
am  envying,  and  I  can't  help  it,  a  friend  who,  going 
out  to  buy  a  bureau,  not  only  captured  it,  but  se- 
cured besides  a  lovely  and  lambent  blue  Chancellor 
Livingston  for  twenty-five  cents. 

Long  before  I  had  collected  all  these  cup-plates 
I  had  decided  that  modern  cut-glass  was  showy  and 
rather  vulgar,  quite  out  of  place  in  my  demure  little 
eighteenth-century  cottage.  I  may  have  been  helped 
to  this  conclusion  by  many  maids,  optimistic  washers 


•Note.  Now  I  do  know.  _  The  Cadmus  cujj-plate  is  probably  commemorative  of  Lafay- 
ette's second  visit  to  America  in  1824-1825.  On  one  of  the  earliest  salt-cellars  made  at 
Sandwich  in  1825  the  ship  design  alternating  with  an  eagle  is  used,  and  this  is  a  definite 
Lafayette  piece. 


A  group  of  cup-plates  with  a  compote  in  centre. 

The  compote  is  from  Mrs.  Dickerman's  collection;, 
the  cup-plcUes  from  the  author's. 


uiiliimiaiuilliiiiiiuiiiiiuiiuiciinriiiimtuiiiiiiiiMiiLaiiiiiimittnintiiiitlilllimii autiiiitiiiii]mtiiiiiii>.)nHmiiiiiUMiimuiiuwiiuiiiiruiMHuluiiaiuuiliiiiiuaHluitiii[]lluiiMiiiiulHl)iuiuiuliJitiiliiii. 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Dickerman. 

Two  lacy-patterned  plates  and  a  sugar-bowl,  creamer,  and  covered  salt. 


From  the  author's  collection. 

A  group  of  salt-cellars.  The  upper  two  are  decorated  almost  in  the  feel- 
ing of  the  SheflBeld  grape  design.  Some  of  the  designs  are  like  magnified 
snow-flakes. 


tiinmmiHnMmrimtiniiriiiuiMtDiiiiiiNiiiininjiiiinMniiiiiiiriniaiMiiimmuiminiiintMiHiiiimiaMiiMiMMtuHmMmituiiniminrDiiiiuiiimnniiHuiiHnimiiHHituuna^^ 


PRESSED   GLASSWARE  41 

of  dishes,  who  broke  nearly  all  my  wedding  presents. 
When  I  surveyed  the  ruins,  I  made  up  my  mind  that 
I  would  never  buy  any  more,  but  collect  instead  this 
early  pressed  glass,  and,  as  our  professorial  purse  grew 
more  ample,  add  Stiegel  and  etched  glass  and  that 
rare  old  Waterford  to  this  foundation.  You  can  see 
that  I  have  been  blessed;  my  friends  give  pressed 
glass  to  me;  people  bring  it  to  sell  to  me,  and  now  I 
have  over  fifty  pieces,  and  more  to  come;  a  lovely 
set  way  out  in  the  country  just  waiting  for  me  to  go 
for  it;  and  I  am  pursuing  a  Washington  plate  and  a 
cake-basket. 

My  salt-cellars  are  charming,  don't  you  think? 
The  upper  pair  are  decorated  almost  in  the  feeling  of 
the  Sheffield  grape-design,  and  the  lower  outer  pair 
somewhat  resemble  a  Louis  Seize  set  in  silver  that  my 
sister  found  at  the  rag-fair  in  Paris.  Some  of  the 
designs  are  fine  enough  to  be  almost  like  magnified 
snow-flakes:  the  little  individual  salt-cellar  and  tiny 
plate  at  the  left  in  the  large  group  are  like  that. 
My  cake-dish  is  somewhat  coarser  in  texture,  but  it 
still  suggests,  in  its  strawberry-and-thistle  design,  the 
names  invariably  given  to  this  glassware:  "lace," 
which  explains  itself,  and  "snake"  from  the  stippled 
effect  resembling  a  snake's  skin. 

Perhaps  the  two  rarest  pieces  are  the  oval  dish  with 
handles,  and  the  jar  with  the  delicate  tracery  of 
landscape  medallions  and  a  diamonded  base  that 
makes  you  think  of  that  Stiegel-looking  glass  made  in 


42  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

Southern  New  Hampshire.  The  platter  —  it  is  about 
ten  inches  long  —  belongs  to  the  full  "Tippecanoe" 
period,  and,  in  my  experience,  is  almost  unique. 
The  handles  are  of  ground  glass  and  represent  sleep- 
ing deer;  and,  if  you  look  closely  at  the  centre,  ground- 
glass,  too,  you  will  see  that  the  Wild  West,  as  America 
then  understood  it,  is  there  depicted:  mountains  in 
the  distance,  a  log-cabin,  fleeing  deer  and  buffalo. 
The  jar,  perhaps,  has  more  artistic  charm,  but  the 
platter  out-values  it  in  naive  unusualness. 

I  cannot  go  into  the  definite  details  of  each  treasure, 
but  I  do  hope  that  you  can  trace  on  the  larger  pieces 
the  really  classic  designs,  set  in  medallions  almost 
Adam  in  effect:  a  blowsy  Venus  leading  a  chubby 
Cupid,  —  that 's  on  the  wide-mouthed  vase,  —  and 
on  the  jam-jar  (on  page  33)  such  a  stern  Minerva! 
They,  too,  carry  on  the  feeling  of  antiquity  as  ex- 
pressed in  the  Empire  period. 

The  full-blown  Goddess  of  Love  also  reminds  me 
of  one  of  my  smaller  collecting  tragedies,  too  tiny,  per- 
haps, to  be  called  anything  but  a  grief,  but  still  real. 
Only  in  one  little  hillside  town  have  I  found  this  par- 
ticular pattern,  and  I  think  it  must  have  existed  once 
early  in  the  nineteenth  century  as  a  complete  set. 
Three  pieces  were  already  mine,  and  the  fourth,  a  large 
cake-plate,  had  been  promised  me  if  the  owner  ever 
broke  up  housekeeping  and  went  away.  And  then, 
by  night,  stealthily  she  fled,  taking  with  her  my  cher- 
ished dish,  and  my  Collector's  Paradise  was  tem- 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Whitney, 


From  the  author's  collection. 


PLATTER    AND    CAKE-DISH 


PRESSED   GLASSWARE  45 

porarily  topsy-turvy.  You  know  how  you  can  want 
things!  I  am  not  a  bit  ashamed  to  tell  you  that  it 
took  all  my  Christian  fortitude  not  to  hope  it  would 
get  broken. 

Will  you  like  my  glass  as  well  as  you  did  my  sten- 
cils, I  wonder.^  After  all,  it  has  much  the  same  feel- 
ing —  that  "folk  feeling"  of  the  early  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, full  of  vigor  and  stamina.  It  may  not  merit  the 
term  "beautiful,"  but  surely  it  is  quaintly  pretty 
and  engaging.  Besides,  as  yet  it  has  not  been  imi- 
tated, and  it  is  still  fairly  easy  to  acquire  —  two  dis- 
tinct blessings.  And  more  than  all  this,  these 
pieces  of  pressed  glass  are  the  fragile  symbols  of  our 
stirring  thirties  and  forties,  and,  as  such,  worthy  a 
place  in  any  collection  of  Americana. 

Note.  —  Since  writing  this  article,  I  have  found  twelve  other 
historical  glass  cup-plates :  two  variants  of  the  Henry  Clay  pat- 
tern; two  other  Hudson  River  boats,  the  "Frigate  Constitu- 
tion" and  the  "Fulton  Steamboat,"  both  with  octagonal  edges; 
two  more  Log  Cabins,  General  Ringold  of  Palo  Alto  fame;  and 
five  more  eagles.  And  my  "  made  in  America"  theory  has  been 
thoroughly  proved;  for  further  investigation  shows  these  his- 
torical glass  cup-plates  to  have  been  pressed  at  Sandwich,  Mass- 
achusetts, early  in  the  nineteenth  century. 


IV 

OLD  WOVEN  COVERLETS 

To-day  I  have  been  very  happy,  and  what  do  you 
think  I  have  been  doing?  Mending  an  old  coverlet; 
a  coverlet  woven,  it  is  said,  before  this  country  of  ours 
was  a  nation,  and  bearing  out  tradition  by  its  linen 
warp  overshot  with  blue  and  red  wools  blended  to- 
gether in  an  intricate  tracery  of  design.  Darning, 
always  a  pleasantly  monotonous  domestic  task,  be- 
comes apotheosized,  glorified,  when  the  fabric  you 
are  working  on  is  in  itself  beautiful.  That  was  part 
of  my  joy. 

The  rest  was  the  way  the  years  rolled  back,  and 
placed  me  in  such  close  kinship  with  the  long-ago 
ancestress  by  marriage  who  wove  this  wonderful 
web  in  the  eighteenth-century  Lowlands.  For  the 
coverlet  is  Scotch;  brought  to  America  in  the  wed- 
ding-chest of  a  bride  who  married  into  a  Dutch  fam- 
ily "up  state"  in  New  York,  when  its  name  was 
changed  to  "spree,"  and  it  became  part  of  the  every- 
dayness  of  existence  like  the  more  ordinary  blue  and 
white  coverlets  woven  here.  What  happy  chance 
preserved  it  to  me?  I  do  not  know.  Certainly  it 
was  used,  not  locked  away  in  a  chest  as  so  many  cov- 
erlets we  find  to-day  have  been.  And  of  course  I 
know  the  reason  that  it  is  directly  mine,  for,  years 
ago,  when  he  was  a  little  lad,  O decided  that  the 


OLD  WOVEN  COVERLETS  47 

engaging  reds  and  blues  would  look  well  on  his 
nursery  bed,  and  claimed  for  his  own  the  "Scotch 
blanket,"  now  returned  to  its  rightful  name.  Can  a 
man  be  said  to  have  a  dowry?  Well,  I  know  that 
among  many  other  excellent  things  I  married  the 
stencil  clock,  the  graceful  Empire  table  in  my  dining- 
room,  and  this  quaint,  desirable  old  coverlet.  You 
see  how  very  strong,  how  well-woven,  it  must  have 
been,  to  defy  time  and  moths  and  a  small  boy's  wear 
and  tear.  And  at  first  I  only  half  appreciated  it;  I 
knew  it  was  a  woven  coverlet;  I  knew  it  was  old;  I 
referred  to  it  casually  as  "the  brick  pattern"  because 
a  dealer  had  once  so  described  it.  Dealers  have  so 
many  fallacies  —  Martha  Washington  tables,  and  so 
on.  I  used  it  as  a  couch-cover;  I  hung  it  up  for  a 
portiere,  never  once  valuing  the  jeweled  beauty  that 
makes  it  as  lovely  as  a  glowing  Bokhara  rug. 

And  then  Eliza  Calvert  Hall's  "Book  of  Hand- 
Woven  Coverlets"  swam  into  my  ken,  and  my  eyes 
no  longer  were  holden.  I  sat,  exultant,  upon  a  peak 
in  Darien.  I  am  not  at  all  ashamed  of  my  ignorance, 
it  is  so  rapidly  changing  into  intelligent  information ; 
and,  besides,  nobody  can  properly  understand  or 
really  "see"  coverlets  until  they  have  read  this  book, 
this  wonderful,  radiant,  marching  book.  Why,  you  'd 
know  that  the  woman  who  wrote  it  believed  in  other 
women,  rejoiced  in  the  earnest  beauty  of  their  work, 
even  if  you  had  never  read  "Aunt  Jane  of  Kentucky." 


48  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

It  is  almost  as  if  she  had  woven  a  lyric  out  of  these 
mountain-women's  lives. 

Well,  the  first  thing  that  I  did  after  I  had  looked 
at  the  illustrations,  and  dipped  here  and  there  into 
its  pages  of  enchantment,  was  to  run  upstairs  for  my 
coverlet,  then  in  the  temporary  seclusion  of  moth- 
balls. I  brought  it  down  and  draped  it  across  my 
Empire  sofa,  and  it  lighted  up  the  room !  Had  I  been 
blind .'^  Here  was  a  wonderful,  gorgeous  fabric,  a 
design  that  lingered  between  "King's  Flower"  and 
"  Governor's  Garden,"  and  yet  was  more  subtle,  more 
intricate  than  either.  Patterns  shaped  themselves 
before  my  eyes:  chariot-wheels,  squares,  octagons, 
oblongs,  and  quaint  heraldic  devices  that  looked  like 
halberds,  blended  and  wove  themselves  into  each  other. 
I  can't  give  you  any  better  comparison  than  this:  it  is 
the  way  you  look  at  the  night-sky  before  you  know 
the  constellations.  At  first  it 's  just  a  tangle  of  stars; 
and  then,  when  you  learn  them,  all  heaven  itself  falls 
into  patterns.  You  must  forgive  my  rhapsodies;  it 
is  the  oldest  coverlet  that  I  have  ever  seen,  and  one 
of  the  loveliest.  It  has  been  joy  to  work  on  it;  restor- 
ing the  time-marred  places  by  the  skill  of  weaving 
my  needle  in  and  out.  And,  while  I  darned,  the 
song  from  "Paracelsus"  hummed  itself  through  my 
mind :  — 

From  closet  long  to  quiet  vowed 
With  mothed  and  dropping  arras  hung, 
Mouldering  her  lute  and  books  among 
As  when  a  queen,  long  dead,  was  young. 


Owned  by  the  author. 


The  oldest  coverlet  of  all.  An  earlier  variety  of  "  Governor's  Garden." 
Linen  warp  overshot  with  blue  and  red  wool.  Dates  from  the  eighteenth 
century. 


I^Si^i^^^'^^'- 


\.„i     »,  V'-fc-* 


From  tit-:  nut/tor's  collection. 

The  "  red,  white,  and  blue  "  coverlet,  woven  in  the  early  nineteenth  century, 
and  a  variant  of  the  "Snowball "  design. 


OLD  WOVEN  COVERLETS  51 

Though,  thank  goodness,  it  isn't  quite  so  fragile  as 
that ;  I  mean  it  gives  you  in  some  way  the  same  magic 
distance  of  time.  And  other  people  feel  it,  too,  I 
think.  When  the  coverlets  were  at  the  studio  posing 
for  their  pictures  I  heard  the  photographers  saying, 
—  my  "Tennessee  Trouble"  coverlet  was  then  on  the 
screen,  —  "Look  pleasant,  please,"  and,  "After  all, 
the  expression  is  everything,"  and  I  believed  that 
my  coverlet's  loveliness  was  wasted  on  these  friv- 
olous men.  Then  the  "Scotch  blanket"  was  hung 
up  to  have  its  likeness  taken,  and  one  of  them  said, 
quite  without  suggestion,  "That's  an  effective  pat- 
tern." I  stopped  long  enough  to  play  my  favorite 
game.  "What  design  do  you  first  see,  the  one  you 
are  conscious  of  when  you  look  at  it?"  I  asked. 
"It's  like  a  checker-board,"  he  answered,  laughing  a 
little;  and  then,  growing  suddenly  serious,  "No,  it 
really  makes  me  think  of  some  of  those  old  Egyptian 
tapestries."  My  faith  was  vindicated  for,  you  see, 
the  verse  from  "  Paracelsus  "  begins 

And  strew  faint  sweetness  from  some  old 
Egyptian's  fine,  worm-eaten  shroud. 

Never  again  shall  the  "Scotch  blanket"  serve  as 
portiere  or  couch-cover,  but,  because  I  hate  unused 
things,  things  locked  away  in  chests,  I  will  hang  it, 
a  glowing,  happy  banner  on  our  study  walls. 

Perhaps  I  ought  to  be  even  more  ashamed  about 
not  recognizing  my  "Tennessee  Trouble,"  for  that 


52  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

came,  you  know,  from  my  own  family.  I  knew  it 
was  an  old  woven  coverlet,  and  that  it  must  be  rare 
because  it  was  white,  —  coverlets  in  this  respect  being 
something  like  blackbirds;  but  not  until  I  studied 
Mrs.  Hall's  book,  and  watched  the  patterns  reveal 
themselves,  did  I  realize  that  this  century-old  cover- 
let, woven  in  East  Tennessee  by  my  great-grand- 
mother's slaves,  was  a  variant  of  the  design  known  as 
"Tennessee  Trouble."  I  am  sorry  that  I  cannot 
show  it  to  you,  white  fringe  and  all,  but  the  pattern, 
charming  as  it  is,  is  too  flat  to  photograph  well  in 
the  one  color.  It  is  in  perfect  preservation,  and  an- 
other excellence  is  its  warmth;  woven  in  the  South, 
it  shuts  out  the  chill  of  a  New  England  winter  as  I 
have  never  known  any  quilt  or  comforter  to  do. 

I  am,  also,  the  happy  owner  of  a  third  coverlet, 
soft  and  warm  and  woven  in  three  colors,  an  unusual 
and  very  charming  effect.  This  has  no  family  asso- 
ciations; I  bought  it  last  fall  way  up  in  Vermont, 
at  a  little  white  farmhouse  on  the  top  of  the  world. 
Below  were  mists,  and  the  hillsides  flamed  with 
maples.  I  had  just  found  a  little  stenciled  footstool 
for  fifty  cents,  —  rare !  why,  I  never  even  heard  of 
one  before,  —  and  then  the  nice  old  farmer  brought 
out  this  lovely  thing,  this  coverlet  as  full  of  color  as 
the  autumn  outside,  and  said,  "Anybody  give  me 
three  dollars  for  this  spread.^^"  I  answered,  "I  will," 
so  quick  that  I  don't  know  how  I  did  it;  and,  as  he 
passed  it  over  to  me  he  said,  "A  lady  was  by  here 


OLD  WOVEN  COVERLETS  53 

last  week,  and  she  offered  me  two  dollars  for  it,  but  I 
sort  of  thought  I  ought  to  get  three."  A  dollar 
apiece,  you  see,  for  each  color,  for  the  red  and  white 
and  blue  that  go  to  make  up  my  coverlet.  Don't 
be  too  sorry  for  the  farmer;  don't  fancy  the  old 
homestead  mortgaged  and  me  an  avaricious  collector. 
He  really  had  more  money  than  I ;  it  was  merely  that 
we  expressed  our  expenditures  differently. 

The  design  I  cannot  quite  identify,  though  it 
seems  to  me  similar  to  the  various  "snowball"  pat- 
terns. Except  for  two  or  three  tiny  time-worn 
places  it  is  in  excellent  condition;  and  the  colors,  how 
shall  I  make  you  see  them.'^  White,  a  creamy  tone, 
the  blue  dark,  and  the  red  not  red  at  all  but  a  coral 
pink,  the  color  that  Mrs.  Hall  describes  as  "just 
hesitating  between  scarlet  and  rose."  That 's  my 
despair  in  writing  this:  I  can  show  you  designs;  I 
cannot  reveal  the  colors  to  you,  these  marvelous 
home-made  dyes  that  have  lasted  and  will  last  as 
long  as  a  shred  of  the  fabric  does.  That  is  why  I 
urge  you  to  save  every  scrap  of  each  coverlet  you 
find,  for  in  no  other  way  can  you  get  such  perfect 
results  in  mending  as  by  using  the  old  threads.  I 
like  to  think  that  this  coverlet  of  mine  was  woven 
when  our  country  was  still  young  enough  to  care  very 
greatly  for  the  symbolism  of  these  three  blended 
colors,  and  that  it  was  kept  gently  so  that  it  might  in 
time  come  to  me  to  be  a  couch-cover  by  day;  at 
night  to  tuck  snugly  round  the  Littlest  Daughter. 


54  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

If  I  could  show  you  color;  if  I  could  turn  my  pen 
for  the  moment  into  a  paint-brush,  I  could  let  you 
see  what  I  reckon  the  most  beautiful  of  all  the  cover- 
lets I  have  ever  beheld.  It,  too,  is  coral  pink,  that 
wonderful,  lighting  rose  that  I  have  just  tried  to  de- 
scribe to  you.  It  is  double-woven,  a  beautiful  piece 
of  workmanship,  dated  1836,  and  signed  with  the 
name  H.  N.  Green,  three  points  that  contribute  to  its 
rarity.  The  signature  might  mean  either  the  name 
of  the  person  for  whom  it  was  woven  or  the  name  of 
the  weaver  himself,  the  latter  more  likely,  for  this 
double-weaving  was  usually  done  by  professionals, 
men  who  traveled  the  countryside,  and  brought  with 
them  when  they  came  new  patterns  and  tales  of  the 
world  without.  In  just  the  same  way  the  majestic 
lions  in  the  corners  and  the  American  eagles  and  stars 
may  indicate  that  the  work  was  done  by  an  English- 
man who  took  this  way  of  binding  his  old  and  new 
homes  together.  Notice  the  formalized  border.  Did 
you  ever  see  anything  more  delightful  than  those  con- 
ventional trees  with  the  little  posing  monkeys  under- 
neath? Such  weaving  is  masterwork;  and  here  it  is 
interesting  to  quote  what  Alice  Morse  Earle  has  to  say 
about  coverlets  like  this,  "The  'setting-up'  of  such  a 
design  is  entirely  beyond  my  skill  as  a  weaver  to  ex- 
plain or  even  comprehend.  But  it  is  evident  that  the 
border  must  have  been  woven  by  taking  up  a  single 
warp-thread  at  a  time,  with  a  wire  needle,  not  by 
passing  a  shuttle,  as  it  is  far  too  complicated  and 


Owned  by  Mrs.  Jar  vis. 

Double-woven  coverlet  in  rose  and  white;  dated  and  very  rare.     This 
is  the  most  beautiful  old  coverlet  that  I  have  ever  seen. 


:■■:  :•■:       :V:-:^:  r.^^".  .",^":  :•:       AS       ©iS!_  iSj©       Siia!       SIS       S  O       =.  .=  C>      .         V 


Owned  by  Mrs.  Wells. 

Double-woven  coverlet  in  dark  blue  and  white,  done  in  the  early  nine- 
teenth century  by  Lucy  Bingham.     The  design  is  the  "Lover's  Chain." 


:1% 


m^^  «^  'ife^  ill 


Owned  by  the  author. 

Cushion  made  from  an  old  woven  coverlet  bought 
in  the  Blue  Ridge  Mountains.  Design,  "Lover's 
Knot";  colors,  dark  blue,   pinkish  ecru,   and  orange. 


OLD   WOVEN   COVERLETS  57 

varied  for  any  treadle-harness  to  be  able  to  make  a 
shed  for  a  shuttle."  I  think  that  the  coverlet  de- 
sign is  older  in  feeling  than  the  actual  date;  it  is 
really  full  of  the  Empire  feeling.  That 's  why  it  is 
going  to  look  so  lovely  on  an  old  acanthus  carved 
four-poster  that  came  from  a  James  River  plantation. 

The  "Lover's  Chain"  —  a  variant  of  "Lover's 
Kiiot" — is  double-woven,  too,  and  as  attractive  in 
its  fresh  blue  and  white  j&nery  as  on  the  day  when  it 
was  first  made.  As  the  old  people  hereabouts  say, 
"there  's  not  a  brack  in  it."  Aside  from  the  beauty  of 
its  design,  the  charm  of  its  quaint,  formalized  tree- 
border,  it  is  very  wonderful  to  me  because  it  was  done 
by  a  woman,  and  this  double-weaving  was  usually  a 
man's  task,  considered  too  hard  and  intricate  for  the 
weaker  sex  to  accomplish.  But  this  woman  could 
and  did,  this  little  valiant-souled,  indomitable  Lucy 
Bingham,  who  lived  a  century  ago  somewhere  in  upper 
New  York  State.  ,  It  is  related  of  her  that  once,  when 
washing  storm-windows,  she  slipped  and  broke  a  rib, 
and,  after  the  doctor  had  bound  up  her  injuries,  she 
insisted  on  beginning  the  washing  all  over  again  be- 
cause she  was  n't  quite  certain  just  where  she  left  off. 
Do  you  wonder  that  such  a  fiery  spirit  could  do  dou- 
ble-weaving as  easily  and  well  as  a  man? 

My  third  and  last  woven  coverlet  (on  page  59)  is 
the  most  interesting  historically  of  the  three:  it  was 
made  in  America  in  those  vibrant,  jingoistic  forties, 
when  our  country  was  burning  to  express  herself. 


58  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

The  weaving  is  a  marvel;  the  color  that  beautiful, 
subtle  blue  which  has  the  depths  of  the  ocean  in  it. 
The  central  design  is  like  English  tapestry,  while  the 
border  resembles  the  coverlet  known  as  "The  Dec- 
laration of  Independence."  There  is  more  printing 
than  one  usually  sees  on  such  pieces:  Washington 
in  each  corner  with  the  patriotic  motto,  and  the  re- 
peated, invincible  slogan,  "Under  this  we  prosper." 
Then,  too,  the  signature,  "J.  Cunningham,  Weaver, 
N.  Hartford,  Oneida  County,  N.  York,"  is  one  that 
I  have  never  before  seen  recorded.  Altogether  it 
is  a  most  unusual  and  valuable  piece. 

Blues  and  whites  are  the  commoner  color  expres- 
sion in  these  coverlets,  but  there  is  such  variety  of 
tones  and  designs  in  them  that  you  may  have  many 
such,  and  never  once  repeat  your  pattern  or  shade. 
For  instance  (on  page  60),  the  "Single  Chariot 
Wheel "  design,  the  variant  of  a  most  primitive  motif, 
is  a  soft  old  blue,  a  watchet  blue,  the  color  of  the 
eyes  of  Elia's  Alice,  and,  lovelier,  to  my  way  of  think- 
ing, than  the  deeper  hues.  And  yet  there  is  such 
stamina,  such  vigor  in  the  indigo  and  white  "Cross" 
coverlet,  that  it,  too,  seems  wholly  desirable. 

Don't  you  like  the  pattern  of  my  cushion-cover? 
(Shown  on  page  56.)  That's  the  real  "Lover's  Knot," 
woven  long  ago  in  the  Blue  Ridge  country.  Of 
all  designs  the  "Lover's  Knot"  seems  to  me  best  and 
loveliest:  clear-cut,  decided,  beautiful.  Part  of  the 
pattern,  time  has  worn  away,  but  the  colors  are  still 


'J;»n         mu 


Double-woven  coverlet  in  blue  and  white;  dated  and  isigiu'd,  and  an 
unique  piece.     "The  Declaration  of  Independence"  pattern. 


"mTT'l' 


Owned  by  Mrs.  J  amis. 

The  design  of  this  dark  blue  and  white  coverlet  is  called  "  The  Cross." 
is  much  variety  of  tones  and  designs  in  these  coverlets. 


There 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Carlelon. 

"Single  Chariot  Wheel"  design  in  old  blue  and  white.     This  design  is  a 
variant  of  a  most  primitive  motif,  and  the  blue  is  a  soft  old  blue. 


OLD  WOVEN  COVERLETS  61 

fresh  and  unfaded :  the  background  a  deep,  dark  blue, 
the  motifs  a  pinkish  ecru  and  a  queer,  tawny  orange. 
These  are  all  the  designs  that  I  have  to  show  you, 
but,  of  course,  I  could  go  on  unendingly.  So  many 
of  these  coverlets  have  been  woven  by  simple,  lov- 
ing, long-ago  hands!  Do  you  realize  that  Mrs.  Hall 
records  the  names  of  nearly  three  hundred  and  fifty 
different  designs?  That  alone  shows  how  the  coun- 
try-women of  America  tried  to  express  beauty  — 
tried  and  succeeded,  and  left  these  woven  patterns 
of  their  lives  for  us  to  wonder  at.  From  New  Eng- 
land they  came  and  New  York,  from  the  South  and 
the  early  Middle  West,  these  coverlets  that  meant  a 
year  of  a  woman's  life  from  first  flax-sowing  to  final 
weaving;  these  marvelous  blues,  these  magic  roses, 
these  gentle  browns  and  greens.  And  you  find  them 
everywhere,  in  the  most  astonishing  places,  if  only 
you  will  take  the  trouble  to  look.  One,  for  example, 
a  rare  piece  of  double-weaving  of  the  Greek  vase  de- 
sign, has  just  moved  away  from  our  town  into  Ver- 
mont. I  never  knew  it  was  there  until  it  had  gone; 
and  it  had  taken  prizes  and  prizes  at  county  fairs,  I 
am  told !  Do  you  know,  I  never  before  realized  that 
the  proud  owners  put  them  on  exhibition;  but  of 
course  they  must  have,  just  as  they  do  patchwork 
quilts  to-day.  And  there  is  another  coverlet  carefully 
locked  away  in  the  local  bank,  but  that  I  shall  in- 
vestigate before  it  escapes  me.  I  have  seen  them 
used  as  careless  covers  on  swinging  hammocks,  on 


62  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

ironing-boards,  for  chair-seats,  even  as  the  patching 
for  an  old  carpet.  See  how  many  of  them  you  can 
rescue;  you  could  n't  find  a  worthier  work.  I  have 
yet  to  discover  the  woman  to  whom  these  old  woven 
bits  of  beauty  do  not  appeal.  "When  Adam  delved 
and  Eve  span,"  you  know.  Well,  apparently  all  of 
Eve's  daughters  have  inherited  their  mother's  tastes. 


V 

LUSTRE  PITCHERS  AND  TEACUPS 

Are  n't  they  dear?    Don't  you  love  them?    I  do, 

and  yet  none  of  them  are  mine;  they  are  all  L 's, 

and  I  admire  them  almost  enough  to  break  the  tenth 
commandment,  but  not  quite,  for  envy  scourges  the 
soul,  and  if  you  cannot  collect  without  it,  then  you 
will  do  very  well  to  leave  collecting  alone. 

Now  I  might  make  this  little  article  a  didactic 
treatise  on  lustre  wares;  inform  you  that  they  were 
made  by  the  early  Persians;  that  wonderful  lustrous 
pottery  was  known  to  Spain  in  the  Middle  Ages ;  that 
John  Hancock,  a  Staffordshire  potter,  rediscovered 
the  lost  process  in  1769  while  working  for  Josiah 
Spode;  and  that  the  more  famous  Josiah  Wedgwood 
himself  experimented  with  it  later  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  All  this  I  might  discuss  in  detail,  but,  you 
see,  I  want  to  tell  you  about  these  especial  pieces, 
and  mingle  fact  with  description  as  I  go  along,  just 
stopping  to  name  over  the  list  of  lustres  for  you :  ruby, 
gold,  copper,  bronzed  purple,  lilac,  pink,  steel,  silver, 
stenciling,  and  resist  lustre. 

The  lovely  silver  resist  pitcher  first  in  the  group 
on  page  67  is  one  of  L 's  heirlooms,  having  be- 
longed to  her  great-great-grandmother.  Sentimen- 
tal considerations  apart,  it  is  very  desirable,  being 
quite  five  and  a  half  inches  tall,  of  quart  capacity,  in 


64  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

"proof"  condition,  and  excellently  decorated.  Here 
I  am  breaking  my  promise  and  being  pedagogical, 
quoting  a  definition  of  "resist"  and  "stenciled" 
lustre  because  I  find  that  so  few  people  know  them 
apart.  "The  term  '  resist '  is  derived  from  the  method 
adopted  in  order  to  secure  a  white  pattern  or  one 
of  another  color,  such  as  blue,  canary,  etc.,  on  a 
silver  or  copper  lustrous  ground.  A  white  surface  or 
one  of  the  other  shades  (there  are  specimens  with 
more  than  one  ground  shade)  is  first  laid  on  the  clay 
body,  the  outline  is  painted  or  stenciled  on  with  a 
substance  such  as  glycerine,  or  some  other  prepara- 
tion which  would  quickly  become  detached  in  water. 
The  whole  pattern  is  lustred  over  with  the  metallic 
solution,  and  allowed  partly  to  dry.  The  ware  is 
next  washed  in  water,  whereupon  the  glycerine  prep- 
aration covering  the  outline  or  pattern  washes  off, 
but  the  metallic  solution  is  not  affected  by  the  bath, 
or,  in  other  words,  it  'resists'  the  water."  The  ware 
is  next  fired,  to  complete  the  process.  This  method 
uses  much  more  of  the  lustre,  and  would  doubtless 
occupy  more  time  to  accomplish  than  the  process  of 
stenciling,  and  it  explains  in  a  measure  why  fine  re- 
sist examples  are  expensive  to  procure.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  must  not  be  overlooked  that  certain 
varieties  of  lustre  treated  with  fine  stenciled  designs 
are  also  difficult  to  purchase.  It  will  be  noticed  that 
the  stencil  leaves  a  lustre  pattern  on  the  prepared 
ground,  while  the  resist  process  leaves  a  white  or 


LUSTRE  PITCHERS  AND  TEACUPS     65 

blue  pattern  on  a  gold  or  silver  self -ground,  according 
to  the  kind  of  metallic  glaze  employed. 

Can  you  see  how  charming  the  next  pitcher  is? 
This  type  is  called  Leeds  Lustre,  —  if  you  ever  go  to 
the  Antiquarian  Rooms  at  Concord,  Massachusetts, 
you  will  find  a  piece  almost  absolutely  its  mate, 
—  and  the  body  is  cream  and  of  that  ridged  ware 
so  connected  with  the  English  city  that  gives  it 
its  name.  There  are  three  "house"  designs  set  in 
medallions,  and  observe,  please,  how  very  like  the 
shape  of  the  one  shown  is  to  the  old  Fairbanks 
House  at  Dedham.  Stripes  of  lustre  divide  the 
medallion  designs,  and  a  beaded  line  separates  the 
rose  pattern  at  the  top  from  the  lower  part.  These 
roses  are  slightly  in  relief,  and  the  tone  is  a  deep 
bronzed  purple.  More  than  a  hundred  years  ago  it 
came  from  Scotland  overseas  to  Canada,  where  it 

was  bought  by  a  collecting  cousin  of  L 's.     It  is 

nearly  as  tall  as  the  first  pitcher,  but  its  capacity  is 
not  so  great. 

The  third  pitcher  is  perhaps  L 's  finest  piece: 

quite  six  inches  in  height,  of  a  clear  copper,  with  the 
raised  figures  so  much  in  the  classic  spirit  that  you 
feel  as  if  it  must  at  least  have  been  made  under  the 
influence  of  Wedgwood,  if  it  did  not  come  directly  from 
his  potteries.  The  background  is  a  soft  blue,  the 
color  I  like  to  think  of  as  watchet  blue,  and  there 
are  five  figures  (six  if  you  count  the  basket) :  a  child 
kneeling  with  flowers ;  a  woman  standing  with  basket 


66  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

on  head;  Cupid  blowing  a  trumpet  and  riding  on  a 
queer  ecru-pink  bull  spotted  with  black;  a  kneeling 
woman;  a  girl  holding  a  votive  offering  of  garlands; 
and  a  large  flower-basket.  A  range  of  six  colors  is  em- 
ployed in  these  figures :  green,  yellow,  red,  pink,  dark 
blue,  and  black,  and  the  whole  feeling  is  full  of  charm. 
It  came  from  Maine,  from  the  little  old  house  of  a 
little  old  lady  who  lives  on  a  point  of  land  that  juts 
down  into  one  of  the  branches  of  the  Kennebec  River. 
I  think  that  it  must  be  a  very  alluring  spot  in  more 

ways  than  one,  for  L says  that  there  were,  besides, 

old  drawn-in  rugs  and  black  and  gold  mirrors  and  a 
most  attractive  Stiegel  toddy-glass  that  belonged  to 
the  little  old  lady's  great-great-grandfather. 

Another  pitcher  with  the  same  foundation  color 
as  this  is  the  first  one  in  the  group  that  stands  like 
"the  great,  big  bear,  and  the  middle-sized  bear,  and 
the  little,  wee  bear."  The  blue,  however,  is  a  trifle 
duller  and  the  texture  of  the  paste  somewhat  less 
fine;  but  it  is,  nevertheless,  filled  with  the  same 
classic  spirit,  the  band  at  the  top  being  very  like  the 
grape-vine  design  on  a  Wedgwood  sugar-bowl  and 
creamer  in  my  own  collection.  This  suggestion  is 
further  accented  by  the  use  of  the  formalized  sprays 
and  acanthus  leaves  in  copper  lustre.  The  two 
smaller  pitchers  in  this  group  are  much  less  remark- 
able —  the  first,  copper  lustre  with  a  green  leaf  and 
pink  flower-pattern  ever  so  slightly  raised;  the  sec- 


^« 


LU8TKE    PITCHERS    FROM    L S  COLLECTION 


From  Mrs.  Carleton's  collection. 

Naive  bucolics  in  pink  lustre. 


From  Mrs.  Carleton's  collection. 


Very  vigorous,  yet  very  different  types 
of  the  bronzed  tones. 


■OBHiaaHiiiioMaiHaMnMaHnMaH 


LUSTRE  PITCHERS  AND  TEACUPS     69 

ond,  a  tiny  thing  with  just  a  broad  band  of  plain 
green. 

The  raised  figures  on  the  next  two  pitchers  have 
a  very  different  effect,  for,  if  the  two  others  are  clas- 
sic odes  of  pottery,  these  are  naive  bucolics  in  pink 
lustre,  quaint  hunting-scenes  with  a  very  rural  air. 
The  ground  is  a  creamish-white  that  time  has  mel- 
lowed and  yellowed  a  little.  On  the  left-hand 
pitcher  the  slender  tree-trunks  of  pink  lustre  support 
a  heavy  verdure;  and  pink  lustre,  too,  are  the  droll 
mother-animal  —  we  don't  know  quite  what  she  is, 
but  she  looks  like  a  llama  —  and  her  trotting  baby. 
On  the  other  side  is  a  dotted  pink  lustre  male  with 
branching  antlers,  undoubtedly  of  the  same  species. 
The  decoration  below  the  lustre  band  at  the  top  is 
quite  different  from  any  other  that  I  have  ever  seen, 
a  queer  scroll  design  with  green  spot  centres.  This 
pitcher  always  makes  me  sad  when  I  look  at  it,  be- 
cause it  represents  an  auction  that  I  did  n't  go  to,  an 
auction  where  there  were  mirrors  and  andirons  and 

pewter;  even  a  grandfather's  clock  that  H found 

lying  out  in  the  grass,  and  that  was  sold  for  five  dol- 
lars. The  second  pitcher  shows  huntsmen  brave  in 
pink  lustre  coats  and  gaiters,  with  polka-dot  dogs  in 
attendance ;  on  the  other  side,  more  dogs  and  a  kneel- 
ing hunter  displaying  a  trophy  of  the  chase  —  and 
this  we  think  a  rabbit,  though  its  design  is  pink  polka- 
dots  like  the  dogs  —  to  an  old  man  with  a  gun,  who 
resembles  the  local  squire.     A  pink  lustre  hound's 


70  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

head  forms  the  end  of  the  handle,  and  the  border  is 
the  fairly  conventional  grape  and  leaf  design.  The 
heights  of  these  pitchers  are  seven  and  six  inches 
respectively. 

I  wish  I  could  show  more  distinctly  the  colorings 
in  the  group  of  copper  lustre  pitchers  below  these 
on  page  68.  The  first,  eight  inches  in  height,  is 
seven-sided,  the  lustre  unusually  clear  and  intense, 
and  the  decorations  pink  and  purple  clusters  of 
grapes  and  vivid  green  leaves.  The  second  is  a 
trifle  darker  and  less  lambent,  with  a  two-and-a-half- 
inch  green  band  stenciled  with  a  copper  design  —  a 
really  uncommon  effect.  The  third,  seven  inches  tall, 
has  a  narrow  upper  band  and  a  broad  lower  band  of 
apricot  yellow  with  a  design  stenciled  in  copper,  too, 
and  all  three  are  very  vigorous,  yet  very  different 
types  of  the  bronzed  tones. 

L 's  gold-lustre  pitcher  is  a  very  fine  specimen, 

fully  six  inches  high,  and  of  rather  more  than  one  quart 
capacity.  The  wide  lower  band  of  pink-purple  lustre 
shows  the  familiar  "house"  design,  and  the  inside  rim 
also  has  a  broad  pinky  stripe.  This  is  another 
trophy  from  Maine,  but  since  it  was  bought  directly 
from  a  dealer,  its  history  is  all  unknown  to  me. 

And  now  I  am  proudly  displaying  the  loveliest 

pitcher  L has,  the  loveliest  lustre  piece,  too,  I 

think  I  have  ever  seen,  barring  that  Swansea  mug 
that  even  now  I  behold  in  my  dreams:  a  rose  lustre 
that  had  somehow  caught  the  soft  glory  of  a  sunset 


MinmiiDiiiiinRiatjimini 


Of  gold  lustre,   fully  six  inches  high,  of 
rather  more  than  one  quart  capacity. 


The  loveliest  pitcher 


if"""'"'""" 


iniQiMiiiiwitltmiimmaMimiitlitMt 


From  Mrs.  Carleton's  collection. 


From  Mrs.  Carleton's  collection. 


From  Mrs.  Carleton's  collection. 


Hm     nnon       t]         n       no 


wotNi  nwntmwfflMQnnnnMannMiKtS* 


MORE    LUSTRE  WARE 


LUSTRE  PITCHERS  AND  TEACUPS     73 

and  forever  imprisoned  it  in  china.  It  is  small,  —  a 
fraction  between  three  and  a  half  and  four  inches, 
—  with  a  purple  "house"  design,  the  best  interpreta- 
tion of  this  well-known  theme  that  I  have  ever  found, 
for  the  trees  are  real  trees,  and  you  can  look  into 
distances.  It  is  the  sort  of  pitcher  to  enchant  a 
child;  it  depicts  a  landscape 

Where  if  I  were  not  so  small 
I  might  live  for  good  and  all. 

The  four  creamers  grouped  together  are  all  small 
ones,  none  more  than  four  and  a  half  inches  high. 
It  is  unfortunate  that  this  photograph  reveals  so 
little  of  the  charm  of  their  color  and  design,  and  par- 
ticularly unlucky  that  the  prettiest  one  of  all  —  the 
second  on  the  right-hand  side  —  shows  hardly  at  all. 
Until  I  met  the  little  purple  treasure,  I  thought  it  the 
most  attractive  of  all  my  acquaintance.  The  nar- 
row band  is  pink  with  a  deeper-toned  lustre  sprigging; 
the  broad  band  white,  the  creamy-white  that  you 
see  in  Queensware,  with  a  scroll-and-flower  pattern 
in  pink  lustre  and  yellows  and  bright  green.  First 
in  the  group  is  the  "Spotted  Sunderland"  lustre 
pitcher,  pink  with  a  purplish  cast ;  the  other  two  are 
variants  of  the  "house"  design,  yet  quite  differ- 
ent, for  the  enclosing  medallions  are  round  on  the 
taller  piece,  oval  on  the  shorter,  and  the  separating 
motifs  are  quite  unlike.  In  both,  the  tones  of  pink 
are  very  fresh  and  clear.     As  for  the  little  mugs,  I 


74  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

find  them  charming  in  their  quaint  colors:  copper 
bands  and  handles,  pink  lustre  in  curves,  and  touches 
of  green  and  a  tawny  orange-red  that  really  combine 
wonderfully. 

The  Odd  Fellows  pitcher  is  more  interesting  than 
beautiful;  although  the  pink  spotted  lustre  deco- 
ration is  good  in  tone.  The  design  is  one  of  the 
transfer  processes,  like  the  Liverpool  ware.  On  one 
side  is  a  symbolic  group,  the  pattern  a  little  blurred, 
as  if  the  paper  had  been  crumpled.  Below  you  read, 
"Manchester  Unity  Independent  Order  of  Odd  Fel- 
lows." The  other  side  depicts  a  river  busy  with 
commerce  and  a  bridge  spanning  it,  and  the  in- 
scription is  as  follows:  "A  West  View  of  the  Cast 
Iron  Bridge  Over  the  River  Wear,  Built  by  L.  Bur- 
don,  Esquire.  Span  238  feet,  Height  100  Feet,  Be- 
gun 24,  September  1793,  Open'd  9,  Aug.  1796." 
In  the  front  is  a  five-pointed  star  in  black  outline, 
with  the  initial  "G"  in  the  centre.  The  middle 
piece,  a  Spotted  Sunderland  lustre  cup-plate,  is  de- 
lightful, the  tone  deepening  almost  to  a  purple  and 
lovely  in  its  shading,  while  the  centre  is  blue  Stafford- 
shire. But  the  cup  and  saucer,  like  the  pitcher,  has 
interest  for  its  chief  charm.  It  must  be  early  nine- 
teenth century,  for  the  costumes  shown  are  Empire, 
and  it  is  full  of  that  larmoyant  feeling  that  people 
had  who  were  very  happy  only  when  they  were  very 
miserable.  A  band  of  lilac  lustre  encircles  both  cup 
and  saucer;  on  one  side  —  oh,  I  wish  you  could  really 


LUSTRE   PITCHERS  AND   TEACUPS     75 

see  it  clearly !  —  are  three  children  touchingly  clus- 
tered in  a  "cemetery  "  weeping  before  their  " Mother's 
Grave,"  and  on  the  other  side,  still  in  deep  purples,  are 
three  disproportionate-sized  "Orphans."  To  enliven 
the  situation  the  "Mother's  Grave"  is  repeated  in 
larger,  less  compact  grief,  on  the  saucer.  Can  you 
imagine  a  more  fitting  receptacle  for  "the  cup  that 

cheers  and  not  inebriates  "  .^^     Well,  L keeps  it  on 

a  shelf  in  her  cabinet! 

The  real  teacups  you  see  grouped  just  below  these 
last.  Of  course,  there  are  more,  but  these  are  the 
prettiest,  and  I  am  allowed,  sometimes,  for  a  great 
treat,  to  have  that  dearest  one  of  all,  the  one  in  front 
with  the  maple-leaf  and  the  clusters  of  berries.  The 
color  that  you  cannot  see  is  a  happy  pink  with  a 
little  lustre  vine,  green  leaves,  and  bright  blue  berries. 
Almost  its  rival  in  beauty  is  the  one  beside  it,  crude 
blue  and  reddish  flowers  spaced  between  lustre  and 
green  leaves.  Truly  they  are  all  lovely,  and  hunting 
for  lustre  cups  for  your  tea-tray  is  quite  as  fasci- 
nating a  pastime  as  discovering  historical  glass  cup- 
plates;  not  easy  to  find,  but  rewarding  at  last  the 
real  devotee  of  their  worth. 

I  wish  that  you  could  have  seen  me  as  I  carried, 
oh,  so  carefully,  these  precious  pitchers  out  to  be 
photographed  in  the  full  light  of  the  piazza.  No 
acolyte  at  any  altar  ever  walked  more  reverently 
than  I  did.  On  the  whole,  it  was  a  wonderful  ex- 
perience; but  I  feel  that  it  has  aged  me,  and  if  any 


76  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

one  of  you  wants  to  court  nervous  prostration,  allow 
me  to  recommend  your  handling  another  collector's 
lustre  treasures.     But  I  wish,  too,  that  you  might 

have  sat  beside  me  yesterday  at  L 's  Sheraton 

table  as  I  studied  with  loving  attention  their  every 
charm.  By  some  happy  chance  the  flowers  in  the 
centre  were  pink  and  purple  asters,  delicate  shades 
that  echoed  the  tones  of  the  pieces  before  me.  I 
know  now  that  of  *' everything  that  pretty  bin" 
pink  lustre  is  the  apotheosis  of  all  prettiness. 


VI 

OLD  LIGHTS  AND  LAMPS 

Then  I  rose,  lighted  a  Candle  at  Father's  fire,  that  had  been 
raked  up  from  Saturday  night,  kindled  a  Fire  in  the  chamber. 

—  The  Diary  of  Samuel  SewaU. 

I  KNOW  a  lucky  lady  who  has  twenty-seven  pairs 
of  old  candlesticks,  to  say  nothing  of  the  odd  ones  she 

possesses.     Of  course  it  is  L ;  I  sometimes  think 

that  she  has  just  to  wish  for  a  thing  hard  to  have  it 
fall  into  her  waiting  hands,  though,  of  course,  I  do 
know  that  patient,  intelligent  persistence  has  a  deal 
to  do  with  it,  too.  And  she  deserves  the  candle- 
sticks, for,  every  night  of  her  little  girlhood  in  Ver- 
mont, she  went  to  bed  by  the  light  of  a  tallow  dip. 

But  before  I,  like  a  fortunate  showman,  display 
her  treasures,  let  me  tell  you  something  about  the 
old  lights  and  lamps  that  our  forefathers  worked  and 
courted  and  studied  by.  I  quoted  that  simple, 
revealing  sentence  from  Judge  Sewall's  diary  be- 
cause, in  the  twentieth  century,  when  the  ease  of 
electricity  makes  even  striking  a  match  a  wearisome 
process,  it  is  so  hard  for  us  to  visualize,  to  imagine 
in  the  least  degree  what  the  seventeenth  century 
was  enduring  in  real  efforts  and  privation. 

Picture  to  yourself  the  first  pioneer  light,  a  pine 
torch,  —  "candle  wood"  it  was  called,  —  flaring  and 
dancing  and  answering  the  flames  on  the  hearth,  for 


78  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

in  the  earliest  days  of  the  Colonies  there  were  no  lamps 
or  candles.  Tallow  was  lacking;  cattle  and  sheep 
grazing  on  the  commons  belong  to  a  somewhat  later 
time,  and  in  the  earliest  letters  and  inventories  of 
Governor  Winthrop,  about  1632,  we  find  constant 
mention  of  "ordinary  suet  and  tallow"  and  "tal- 
low and  wick"  as  being  among  the  necessities  to  be 
imported.  When  the  candles  themselves  were  sent 
over,  they  cost  f ourpence  apiece :  no  small  item  of  ex- 
pense in  a  Colonial  menage,  nor  would  it  be  to-day, 
for  this  same  fourpence  must  be  multiplied  by  three 
to  give  its  real  purchasing  power  now,  and  a  candle 
for  a  quarter  would  be  a  decided  luxury.  Even  as 
late  as  1730  they  were  used  sparingly.  In  his  quaint, 
gossiping  diary  Samuel  Sewall,  telling  of  his  unsuc- 
cessful wooing  of  Madame  Winthrop,  writes,  —  and, 
by  the  way,  if  you  want  an  illuminating,  fluent  com- 
mentary on  the  life  of  the  times  you  should  surely 
read  him,  —  "Madame  Winthrop  not  being  at  Lec- 
ture, I  went  thither  first;  found  her  very  serene 
with  her  dater  Noyes,  Mrs.  Dering  and  the  widow 
Shipreev  sitting  at  a  little  Table,  she  in  her  armed 
Chair.  She  drank  to  me  and  I  to  Mrs.  Noyes. 
After  awhile  I  pray'd  the  favor  to  speak  to  her. 
She  took  one  of  the  Candles,  and  went  into  the  best 
Room,  clos'd  the  shutters,  sat  down  upon  the 
Couch."  Now,  since  both  were  well  along  in  years, 
her  one  candle  must  be  attributed  to  frugality,  not 
coyness. 


liKU  !ll  i  I 


These  smaller  pairs  of  candlesticks  are  just  as  characteristic  and  different 
as  their  taller  brothers. 


From  Mrs.  Carleton's  collection. 

At  first  glance  these  six  pairs  of  candlesticks  seera  very  much  alike,  but 
examine  them  through  a  reading-glass  and  you  will  see  the  decided  differ- 
ence, for  no  two  pairs  are  exactly  alike. 

:iiiniiuniiiirmiiaMtiiiiiiiiii]KiHiiiiinuniiiimitiaiiiiimiiionimuinaiiiiitMiitiariiNniiiiiniiliniiiMiUi»mMMNUlliinH^^ 


K||1IHIII)UIBD( 


iimmdnoramiammimiKJiimnnnicmimiminmiimmiDHnimimmimimiiainiiiniMititniitmtnrmimmioiiiriiiiimnii imiciiiiriiiiimamitiiiiiuauiimmiiauujiijuiiaiii 


Candlesticks  found  in  New  England  villages. 


A  pair  of  traveling  candlesticks  with  saucer 
bases  and  sockets  that  unscrew. 


Candle-mould,  three  whale-oil  lamps,  uirI  Luo  '"  i5cU,>  Lamps." 
The  latter  could  be  suspended  where  they  would  give  the  reader 
his  best  light. 

jiiiiimmiioiiiiiii [iiiiiiii ariiMiiiMiiciHiuiiiMiiaiiiiiiMiimiMiuiiiiiiiaiinimtiiiciiiiiiitiimuiniiiiiitiioiiiiiiiiiitiamiiiiiiiiiaiiiii'iiimuiitNiiiiiiiaMmMtimainritiiiiiiDNinnm^^^ 


OLD  LIGHTS  AND  LAMPS  81 

Where  did  all  the  candlesticks  come  from,  I  won- 
der? There  are  so  many  now.  In  1636  they  were 
important  enough  to  be  mentioned  in  several  wills, 
often  just  a  single  candlestick  being  noted.  Sixty 
years  later,  part  of  a  legacy  is  recorded  as  being  paid 
in  40  "brass  candlestiks  of  a  middle  cize."  In 
1719  they  were  still  being  ordered  from  London; 
Judith  Sewall's  wedding  outfit  included  "Two  pair 
of  large  Brass  sliding  Candlesticks,  about  four  shill- 
ings a  pair,  two  pair  of  large  Brass  Candlesticks,  not 
sliding,  of  the  newest  fashion,  about  five  or  six 
shillings  a  pair  and  four  Brass  Snuffers  with  Stands." 

So  much  for  candlesticks.  A  method  of  lighting 
almost  equally  used,  following  the  pine  torch,  was 
the  "Betty  Lamp,"  shaped  rather  like  the  old  Roman 
lamps,  made  of  brass  or  iron,  hanging  from  a  chain 
ending  in  a  large  ring  so  that  it  might  be  suspended 
where  it  would  give  the  reader  his  best  light,  some- 
times on  the  round  in  the  back  of  a  chair,  sometimes 
from  a  hook  on  the  mantel-shelf.  The  body  was 
filled  with  tallow  or  oil  and  a  little  rag  or  wick  in- 
serted at  the  lip.  I  have  burned  a  Betty  Lamp! 
I  did  not  see  what  could  possibly  be  the  use  of  one 
in  the  house  if  you  did  n't  know  how  it  worked.  So 
I  took  the  larger  one,  the  brass  one  there  in  the  pic- 
ture, filled  it  a  third  full  of  tallow  and  inserted  a  rudely 
twisted  wick.  It  burned  for  an  hour  with  a  flame 
steadier  and  larger  than  a  candle  flame,  and  by  a 
simple  process  of  arithmetic  I  arrived  at  the  con- 


82  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

elusion  that  the  lamp,  filled,  would  burn  nearly  three 
hours.  This  one  came  from  Massachusetts,  the 
smaller  iron  one  from  Virginia,  and  both  are  furnished 
with  the  little  metal  pin  for  picking  out  the  tallow  or 
oil  when  it  became  clogged.  The  light  the  Betty 
Lamp  gave  was  quite  sufficient  to  read  by;  it  was 
only  when  it  went  out  that  I  regretted  my  experi- 
ment, for  it  left  a  confused,  muttonj^  sort  of  smell. 
I  immediately  understood  why  the  colonists,  when 
they  found  the  abundant  bayberry  bushes  growing 
along  the  seacoast,  hastened  to  make  their  wax  into 
candles,  for,  "if  accident  puts  a  candle  out,  it  yields 
a  pleasant  fragrancy  to  all  that  are  in  the  room; 
insomuch  that  nice  people  often  put  them  out  on  pur- 
pose to  have  the  incense  of  the  expiring  snuff." 

Some  day  I  shall  make  many  of  these  spicy  things, 
and  burn  them  in  your  honor  when  you  come  to  see 
me.  For  I  have  moulded  and  dipped  candles  my- 
self! My  spirit  of  research  would  not  let  me  rest 
until  I  had  tried,  and  I  had  always  wanted  to  use 
these  old  candle-moulds  discovered  in  a  village  attic. 
My  market-man,  who  is  of  an  obligingness,  —  often 
he  looks  up  antiques  for  me  when  he  goes  hunting 
or  fishing  in  the  backwoods,  for  such  is  the  neigh- 
borliness  of  a  little  country  town,  —  got  me  all  the 
tallow  I  wanted,  and  I  embarked  on  what  I  am  sure 
was  one  of  the  most  endless  of  Colonial  tasks.  Mould- 
ing is  not  so  difficult;  perhaps  that  is  why  experts 
insist  that  a  "dipped"  candle  is  a  much  superior 


OLD  LIGHTS  AND  LAMPS  83 

product.  The  difficulty  of  moulding  is  merely  a 
question  of  getting  the  wicks  properly  "threaded" 
through.  I  used  a  large  darning-needle,  and  as  I 
worked,  I  couldn't  help  hoping  that  the  ancestress 
whose  spirit  was  urging  me  on  had  something  better 
to  work  with  than  the  poor,  sleazy  stuff  that  is  sold 
for  wicking  nowadays.  I  read  once  that  Colonial 
children  used  to  gather  milkweed  silk  and  spin  it  into 
wicking.  That  seems  like  capturing  a  dream,  does  n't 
it .5^  Well,  my  candle-wicking  was  quite  as  fragile; 
it  acted  as  if  possessed:  gossamer,  cobweb,  moon- 
shine !  It  broke  if  you  looked  at  it !  If  I  had  lived  in 
those  days,  I  know  I  should  have  been  haled  before  the 
Spiritual  Court;  Cotton  Mather  would  have  admon- 
ished me,  and  that  pungently,  for  my  expressed  state 
of  mind!  After  the  wick  has  been  run  through  the 
mould  and  secured  at  the  top  by  being  twisted  around 
a  nail  to  hold  it  in  place,  it  is  a  comparatively  simple 
matter  to  pour  in  the  melted  tallow,  let  it  harden, 
and  later  remove  it  by  much  the  same  process  you 
would  use  in  taking  ice-cream  out  of  a  mould. 

I  must  confess  to  a  certain  feeling  of  primitive 
pride  when  my  first  candle  slipped  out:  I  lighted  it» 
and  it  burned!  Dipping  is  infinitely  more  tedious. 
You  must  have  a  kettle  full  of  bubbling,  boiling 
water,  on  top  of  which  the  melted  tallow  lies  in  a 
thick,  yellowish  sheet.  The  wicking  must  be  looped 
over  the  candle-rods,  and  twisted  into  a  stout  wick. 
I  tallowed  mine  to  make  them  completely  straight. 


84  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

Next,  if  you  are  a  wise  woman,  you  will  spread  papers 
all  over  your  kitchen  floor;  for  you  must  dip  and  dip 
and  dip  the  wicks  endlessly  into  this  melted  fat  — 
cooled  a  little,  of  course  —  in  between  letting  them 
dry  hard  and  firm,  for  a  candle  dipped  too  quickly 
will  melt  and  run.  They  say,  you  know,  that  a  good 
worker  could  dip  her  two  hundred  candles  a  day. 
At  my  rate  of  accomplishment  I  know  I  would  not 
have  been  considered  worth  my  board  and  keep  in 

Puritan  times.     I  have  a  vague  memory  of  O 

coming  in  and  asking,  "Are  you  going  to  fight  it  out 
along  those  lines  if  it  takes  all  summer .f^"  Anyhow, 
no  longer  do  I  feel  helpless;  electricity  may  go,  the 
exigencies  of  war  take  our  kerosene,  but  my  candles, 
like  the  knitting-needles  in  "  Vassalissa  the  Fair,"  will 
gleam  and  "give  me  light  enough." 

The  whale-oil  lamps  (on  page  80)  represent  a  lit- 
tle later  stage  of  lighting  than  the  Betty  Lamps,  just 
why,  it  is  hard  to  say,  for  fish-oil  was  available  in 
the  Colonies  before  tallow.  However,  lamps  such  as 
these  became  common  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  were  usually  made  of  pewter,  although  I  have 
seen  one  pair  made  of  copper  and  heard  of  another 
made  of  brass.  The  two  larger  ones  have  double 
wicks,  the  middle  just  a  single  one,  and  all  three 
represent  a  type  of  whale-oil  lamp  much  in  use  in 
New  England  in  Colonial  times,  and  still  to  be  picked 
up  cheaply.  The  little  one,  for  instance,  I  bid  in  at 
an  auction  for  five  cents,  and  the  others  were  a  dollar 


OLD  LIGHTS  AND  LAMPS  85 

and  a  dollar  and  a  half  apiece.     Mine  are  the  plainer 

type,  but  whale-oil  lamps  can  be  very  lovely.     L 

and  I  found  just  such  a  treasure  when  we  were  out  on 
quite  another  antique  errand,  the  quest  of  a  carved 
bed,  to  be  exact.  It  was  one  of  those  beautiful  days 
of  early  autumn,  with  a  blue,  hot  sky,  and  clouds  of 
yellow  butterflies  dancing  round  our  wagon-wheels 
as  we  drove  along  an  enchanting  wood-read  winding 
up  and  up,  with  a  little  brown  brook  to  keep  us 
company.  We  found  the  bed,  and  then  we  found 
this  lamp:  a  fine,  lustrous  pewter,  more  beautiful 
in  its  lights  and  shades  than  silver,  and  as  graceful 
and  dignified  and  simple  in  shape  as  one  some  Pom- 
peian  girl  might  have  used.  And  money  couldn't 
buy  it!  They  had  "had  it  a  long  time  in  the  fam- 
ily." Oh,  well,  it  is  good  for  your  soul  to  have  some- 
thing to  want !  Do  you  know  I  am  wondering  what 
Judge  Sewall  meant  by  those  candlesticks  "not 
sliding,  of  the  newest  fashion,"  because  that  smaller 
pair  of  French  candlesticks  (on  page  90)  are  not 
sliding  and  are  very  old:  this,  the  round  circle  of 
brass,  to  catch  the  wax-drip,  shows.  They  were 
picked  up  at  the  Paris  rag-fair,  among  the  wreckage 
of  some  artist's  studio,  for  a  franc  each.  That,  too, 
was  the  price  of  the  central  candlestick,  bought  at  the 
same  time — a  very  fair  example  of  Empire,  though  not 
so  good  as  the  larger  pair,  for  the  chasing  on  these 
is  beautiful.  Somehow  they  had  drifted  to  New 
Haven,  and  L knew  that  she  had  got  a  bargain 


86  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

when  she  bought  them  at  a  little  second-hand  shop 
for  six  dollars. 

I  am  wondering,  too,  how  many  of  you  have  ever 
seen  a  pair  of  little  traveling  candlesticks  like  those 
on  page  80?  Practically,  they  are  just  a  pair  of  sock- 
ets set  in  deep  brass  saucers,  and  they  are  very  rare, 
this  particular  pair  being  the  only  ones  we  have  ever 
found  for  sale  in  our  North  Country  range.  The 
sockets  unscrew  and  fit  inside  the  saucers,  which,  in 
their  turn,  screw  together  into  one  compact  whole. 
It  is  said  that  they  were  first  made  in  Salem,  for  the 
captains  and  supercargoes  who,  if  they  were  very  pros- 
perous, had  them  fashioned  of  silver. 

I  like  these  candlesticks;  they  are  very  quaint, 
and  they  are  a  tribute  to  the  wisdom  of  general  con- 
versation. In  this  case  it  was  not  only  the  travel- 
ing candlesticks,  but  another  pair  and  a  mirror  and 
a  stunning  astral  lamp-globe  that  we  found  in  the 
little  farmhouse.  The  other  candlesticks  have  a  less 
stirring  history,  but,  since  they  came  from  our  favor- 
ite dealer,  —  who  picks  up  his  treasures  around  the 
countryside  much  as  we  do,  —  their  hidden  stories 
must,  I  am  sure,  be  interesting. 

At  the  first  glance  these  six  pairs  of  candlesticks 
(on  page  79)  seem  to  be  very  much  alike.  I  wish  you 
would  take  a  reading-glass  and  examine  them  care- 
fully. If  you  do  you  will  see  the  decided  difference; 
for  no  two  pairs  are  just  the  same.  The  very  front 
ones   are   epoch-making;    they   were   the   "opening 


OLD   LIGHTS  AND  LAMPS  87 

wedge,"  and  L really  dates  her  collecting  from 

the  day  that  she  bought  them.  Another  pair  rep- 
resents our  "swapping"  system;  the  real  New  Eng- 
land dealer  still  loves  to  "trade"  and  dicker,  and  the 
price  of  these  was  a  mahogany  mirror-frame.  But 
the  large  ones  at  the  back  are  the  most  interesting 
of  all  —  very  massive,  yet  with  a  steady  excellence  of 
line.  Although  we  bought  them  in  an  outlying  coun- 
try district,  they  originally  stood  on  the  parlor  man- 
telpiece of  an  old  hotel  in  a  neighboring  town,  and 
another  pair,  their  exact  mates,  still  exist  somewhere 
hereabouts,  and,  one  fine  day,  we  are  going  to  find 
them.  And  please  examine  with  your  careful  read- 
ing-glass the  other  smaller  half-dozen  pairs,  for  they 
are  just  as  characteristic,  just  as  unique,  just  as  differ- 
ent as  their  taller  brothers,  and  quite  as  much  they 
represent  our  collecting  range  in  New  Hampshire 
and  Vermont.    Old  candlesticks  like  these  polish  into 

a  beautiful  lustrous  pallor,  and  L 's  almost  wink 

at  you,  they  shine  so. 

The  saucer  candlesticks  (on  page  89)  came  from 
an  "old  woman  who  lives  under  a  hill,"  a  beauti- 
ful hill,  and  that  I  mean  literally,  for,  as  we  drove 
out  of  her  dooryard,  the  pointed  horizon-line,  shoul- 
dering its  way  into  the  sky,  faced  us  with  loveliness. 
The  by-products  of  "  antique-ing  "  are  wonderful,  too, 
you  know.  These  candlesticks  are  very  good  of 
their  kind,  with  their  small  curved  rings  and  little 
"palmettes,"  but  are  not  to  be  compared  for  value 


88  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

with  the  three  tall  ones  grouped  in  front  of  them. 
These  are  most  unusual  and  very  old,  with  the  slide 
at  the  side,  not  at  the  bottom,  as  so  many  of  the  later 
types  have ;  and  three  of  a  kind  of  candlesticks  in  the 
game  of  "Collector's  Luck"  is  very  good  fortune 
indeed.  And  their  worth  is  enhanced  by  the  fact 
that  the  snuffers  and  tray  complete  the  set. 

The  Sheffield  candlesticks,  ten  inches  tall  and  of 
the  shell-and-scroll  pattern,  are  in  really  splendid 
condition,  with  not  a  shading  of  the  copper  showing 
through:  an  unusual  thing  for  Sheffield,  but  then, 
they  are  cherished  heirlooms,  and,  just  think,  on  the 
other  side  of  the  family  is  a  second  set  of  a  different 

pattern  and  quite  as  perfect,  which  L is  waiting 

to  have  swept  to  her  on  her  lucky  tide  of  chance. 

Those  massive  candlesticks  all  grouped  together 
are  American  only  in  the  sense  that  their  emigrant 
owners  brought  them  on  their  pilgrimage  to  this  land 
of  gold  where,  that  they  might  stay,  alas,  they  had  to 
sell  their  brass  and  copper.  The  florid  ones  at  the 
back  are  Polish;  the  rest,  for  the  most  part,  came 
from  a  little  shop  in  the  North  End  of  Boston  kept 
by  a  Russian  Jew,  not  long  since  a  "greener"  himself. 
It  is  just  such  collecting  adventures  that  make  you 
know  how  real  a  book  like  "David  Levinsky"  is. 
I  think  this  earnest  little  Yiddish  man  always  hoped 
to  convert  me;  certainly  his  hospitality  was  as 
boundless  as  his  Talmud  lore,  and  he  lavished  both 
upon   me.     Friendliness   lies   anywhere   you   choose 


"t"""" 


Two  saucer  candlesticks  and  three  un- 
usual and  very  old  sticks  with  the  slide  at 
the  side,  not  at  the  bottom.  Snuffer  tray 
in  front. 


Sheffield  stick,  one  of  a  pair, 
ten  inches  tall,  of  the  shell- 
and-scroll  pattern,  without 
a  trace  of  copper  showing. 


The  heavy  candlesticks  at  the  back  of  the  photograph  at  the  left  are 
Polish:  the  rest  came  from  a  little  shop  in  the  North  End  of  Boston  kept 
by  a  Russian  Jew. 


An  Empire  candle- 
stick picked  up  at  a 
Paris  rag-fair,  as  was 
the  smaller  stick,  one 
of  a  pair,  very  old,  with 
brass  disk  to  catch  the 
wax. 


1 

J. 

t 

.* 

Owned  by  the  author. 


From  Mrs.  Carleton's  collection. 

Astral  lamp  with  fluted 
bronze  standard,  fitted  for 
electricity. 


One  of  a  pair  of 
French  Empire  can- 
dlesticks bought  in 
New  Haven;  very 
beautiful  and  stately. 


OLD  LIGHTS  AND  LAMPS  91 

to  look  for  it,  you  see.  Soon  he  invited  me  to  "Pass- 
over" supper  at  his  house;  next,  to  his  pretty  niece 
Rosie's  most  orthodox  wedding,  the  great  occasion  of 
his  Hfe.  Maybe  that  is  why  I  have  such  faith  in  the 
genuineness  of  his  wares;  but  another  and  perhaps 
better  reason  is  because  candlesticks  are  used  in  such 
quantities  as  a  necessary  part  of  Jewish  religious 
ritual,  that  there  is  more  chance  of  finding  really  old 
ones  than  if  they  were  merely  means  of  lighting. 

Do  you  suppose  the  reason  L has  so  many 

lovely  lamps  is  because,  just  as  with  the  candles, 
she  lived  by  their  yellow  glow  in  her  girlhood?  These 
astral  lamps  were  very  grand  in  their  day  of  the  early 
nineteenth  century.  Don't  you  remember  Whit- 
tier's  lines  when  Maud  Muller  was  thinking  "it 
might  have  been".'' 

The  weary  wheel  to  a  spinet  turned. 
The  tallow  candle  an  astral  burned. 

Meant  to  indicate  great  splendor,  you  see. 

This  one  is  beautiful  and  dignified,  with  its  fluted 
bronze  standard,  at  the  base  set  into  curled-over 
acanthus  leaves,  at  the  top  ending  in  fleurs-de-lis. 
The  globe  is  unusually  fine,  ground  glass  spaced  with 
transparent  stripes,  and  the  upper  edge  is  cut  in  a 
clear  diamond  shape.  It  is  quite  thirty-one  inches 
tall,  and  instead  of  burning  oil  has  been  fitted  for 

electricity  and   stands   on   L 's   carved   Empire 

table,  a  usable  thing  of  beauty  and  a  practical  joy 
forever. 


92  COLLECTOR'S   LUCK 

The  next  lamp,  ten  inches  shorter,  is  lovely,  too, 
its  base  being  marble  and  gilt  with  a  fluted  support, 
the  same  motif  being  carried  up  under  the  pendants, 
which  are  beautifully  cut.  You  will  see  quite  a 
good  deal  of  their  delicate  design  if  you  look  through 
my  recommended  reading-glass;  and  you  can  under- 
stand why  small  villages  have  a  fascination  for  us 
when  I  tell  you  that  this  one  came  from  a  tiny  place 
about  ten  miles  north  of  us. 

But  I  think  I  prefer  the  third  lamp,  even  if  the 
lustres  are  plain.  The  globe  is  so  beautifully  cut, 
the  grooved  standard  almost  classic  in  its  simplicity, 

and  the  oil-well  is  glass,  not  metal.     L found  it 

in  the  little  village  just  across  the  river,  the  one  thing 
in  a  whole  house  that  it  wouldn't  have  been  "a  re- 
mission of  sins"  merely  to  have  owned. 

Little  glass  lamps  are  delightful  for  bedrooms,  and 
these  three  are  particularly  pretty.  The  pair  are 
all  glass,  the  bases  being  pressed,  and  —  let  me  tell 
you  this  for  your  comforting  —  the  shades  of  these 
two  are  new.  Ordinarily,  most  reproductions  do  not 
get  the  grace  and  "feeling"  of  these  early-nineteenth- 
century  globes,  but  the  right  type  may  be  found  by 
careful  search  and  comparison.  The  body  of  the 
centre  lamp  is  as  beautifully  cut  as  the  shade,  and 
so  delicate  that  pendants  would  be  superfluous. 

Not  that  I  don't  like  lustres:  I  think  they  are 
charming.  I  do  not  know  when  I  have  seen  anything 
prettier  than  those  fringing  the  little  bobeches  of  the 


i 


I     Astral  lamp  with  base  of  marble  and  gilt         xhe  grooved  standard  of  this     I 
with  pendants  beautifully  carved.  astral  lamp  is  almost  classic  in     | 

its  simplicity.  | 


Little  glass  lamps  are  delightful  for  bedrooms,  and  these  three 
are  particularly  pretty.  The  pair  are  all  glass,  the  bases  being 
pressed. 


I 


uiiii(iiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiic]iiiiiiiiiiiJUiuiiiiiiiiii]iiNiiiiiiii(]uiiiiiiiiii[]iiiiiiiiuiicjiiiiiiiii>iit]iiiiiiiiiinc]uuuiiiuu  tL 


Two  pairs  of  pressed-glass  candlesticks, 
one  with  charming  lustres. 


Girandoles  with  an 
Indian  chief  as  the 
bearer  of  the  light. 


Both  groups  ovmed  by  Mrs.  Carleton. 


iniiiiiclimiiillillDilllltlNUICliillliMlliftliiiiitilrllilllillHillllollilliiiiiiaillllliillliOllllliKillOllllimiiiaiimillluUbL 


OLD  LIGHTS  AND  LAMPS  95 

glass  candlesticks.  If  I  were  speaking  in  French  I 
would  call  them  mignonnes.  From  tiny  glass  beads, 
cut  something  the  way  an  amber  necklace  is,  hang 
long,  straight  icicles,  and  these  end  in  cunning  bells, 
with  small  glass  tongues  twinkling  and  tinkling  in- 
side, in  shape  a  little  as  if  a  snowdrop  had  suddenly 
been  crystallized.  The  candlesticks  themselves  are 
good  examples  of  pressed  glass,  as  are  the  other  pair, 
too,  the  bases  of  the  first  being  hexagonal,  those  of 
the  second,  round. 

The  girandoles,  heirlooms  also,  are  the  end-pieces 
of  a  set,  the  centrepiece  having  gone  to  some  other 
member  of  the  family,  and,  of  course,  the  completed 
trio  would  be  more  valuable.  But  I  am  showing 
you  these  because  they  in  themselves  are  so  good  a 
design.  I  like  the  straight,  perpendicular  effect  of 
the  Indian  figure,  —  do  you  suppose  it  is  Tecum- 
seh.f^  —  for  most  girandoles  are  too  ornate  and 
over-foliaged.  The  Indian  chief  is  a  fitting  bearer 
of  light. 

As  I  have  written  all  this  I  have  felt  very  much  a 
laudator  temporis  acti,  an  honest  praiser  of  old  days. 
I  know  I  am  fortunate  to  have  electricity  in  my 
eighteenth-century  cottage;  but  will  any  other  light 
ever  be  as  lovely  as  candlelight  with  its  translucent 
glow  beneath  the  flame  .^^  Will  anything  else  ever 
seem  as  welcoming  as  lamplight .''  This  winter,  as  I 
have  driven  through  the  countryside  at  dusk,  and 
watched    the    little    farmhouses,   their   small-paned 


96  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

windows  warm  with  a  mellow  glow,  —  the  "yellow 
day,"  as  Balzac  calls  it,  —  I  have  realized  that  in 
catching  step  with  civilization  we  have  left  something 
of  beauty  on  the  road  behind  us. 


VII 
OLD   VALENTINES  AND   SILHOUETTES 

Like  Pendennis,  I  have  fallen  in  love.  Not  with  the 
Venus  of  Milo,  as  he  did,  but  with  a  gracious  French 
lady,  dressed  in  soft  blues  and  pearly  whites,  and  with 
the  nicest  smiling-serious  face  in  the  world.  I  want 
her  more  than  I  do  anything  else,  I  think,  unless  it  is 
to  have  had  Goya  paint  my  portrait,  —  and  so  have 
been  made  forever  interesting,  —  or  to  own  Jane 
Austen's  desk  —  which,  though  I  have  never  seen  it, 
must  be  good  because  it  was  built  at  a  time  when 
furniture  just  could  n't  be  bad.  I  want  her  to  hang 
against  the  grays  of  my  parlor-walls  and  adorn  them 
with  her  beauty.  She  would  look  as  lovely  there  as 
in  some  old  Perigord  chateau,  such  is  the  universality 
of  her  charm.  I  shan't  have  her,  though,  for  David's 
study  of  my  incomparable  Madame  de  Seriziat  lives 
in  a  sumptuous  Fifth  Avenue  gallery,  and  all  I  can 
do  is  to  go  occasionally  to  look  and  long.  Oh,  well, 
all  of  us  should  have  these  spiritual  Carcassones. 
They  are  good  for  our  souls. 

But  to  have  known  her  is  a  liberal  education. 
"Universality  of  her  charm"  ^ — ^I  like  that  phrase 
even  if  I  did  write  it,  because  it  shows  that  I  am 
developing  a  picture  sense,  and  the  feeling  for  walls 
and  what  should  be  on  them  is,  almost  invariably, 
the  wisdom  that  lingers.     What  I  mean  I  've  gained 


98  COLLECTOR'S   LUCK 

is  that  instinct  which  preserves  you  from  putting  the 
oversentimen tally  sweet  Psyche  at  Nature's  Mirror 
against  a  dark  paneled  oak  background,  or  hang- 
ing The  Study  in  Anatomy  in  a  boudoir.  Which 
bit  of  philosophizing  brings  me  to  these  old  valen- 
tines and  silhouettes.  Three  distinct  values  they 
have:  they  are  very  well  suited  to  a  "middling 
house,"  —  and  most  of  us  have  "middling  houses," 
I  fancy,  —  they  are  redolent  of  time's  enchantment, 
and  they  do  not  throw  out  of  key  a  room  where  you 
are  trying  for  an  old-fashioned  effect,  an  ensemble  of 
quaint,  rested-looking  furniture,  as  even  a  very  good 
photograph  of  a  very  great  masterpiece  oftentimes 
will  do. 

They  have  a  fourth  dimension  of  merit,  too:  they 
are  very  inexpensive.  Not  that  they  did  not  lead 
me  into  ways  of  extravagance,  because,  after  I  had 
discovered  them  in  a  delightful  shop,  I  found  such  an 
engaging  engraving  of  the  Duchess  of  Marlborough 
that  I  simply  had  to  have  it.  It  is  from  an  early  por- 
trait, one  of  the  few  interesting  pieces  of  work  done  by 
"that  stupid,  vaporing  Kneller,"  and  below,  in  faded 
brown  ink,  are  the  words,  "13  July  1710,  Paid  in  full, 
S.  Marlborough."  Sarah  before  she  had  cut  off  her 
curls  in  a  tantrum  and  flung  them  at  the  Great  Duke; 
Sarah  while  she  was  still  dominating  Anne  and  gov- 
erning England.  This  is  n't  valentines,  but  I  had  to 
tell  you  about  it. 

As  for  valentines,  perhaps  they  have  been  sent  ever 


"The  pair  of  which  this  is  one — they  hang  in  the  'Prettiest 
Room' — are  the  oldest:  the  dress,  the  despair,  the  attitude  of 
that  melancholy  gentleman,  all  are  Byronic.  The  mate  to  this 
valentine  will  be  found  on  the  following  page. 


"As  for  the  languishing  lady,  if  you  look  close,  I  am  sure  you  can 
see  the  towers  of  Udolpho  in  the  distance.  They  are  charmingly  col- 
ored in  pinks  and  blues,  and  the  first  border,  just  inside  the  heavier 
embossed  edge,  is  delicately  tinted  in  the  same  shades." 


l|j)HiHwwiuimiMiiii(]Hiiiiiijiitomiiiiiuiiu«iHiititiiuiuMiiiiiuuiiiiiuiiiiiuiiuuumiauiuuiuiiai 


juuiuuaiuiiiituiiQniiiiiiuiiuiimiiriiiiauiuitiiiiiaimimiii<E]iiitiiiniiiaiimiiiiiiiniinitiiiiii[«, 


OLD  VALENTINES  AND  SILHOUETTES  101 

since  the  early  Church  Fathers  turned  the  Luper- 
caha  into  a  Christian  festival :  but  the  earliest  record 
I  have  been  able  to  find  is  when  Pepys,  writing  on  the 
fourteenth  of  February,  1667,  says,  "This  morning 
came  up  to  my  wife's  bedside,  I  being  up  dressing 
myself,  little  Will  Mercer  to  be  her  Valentine;  and 
brought  her  name  writ  upon  blue  paper  in  gold  let- 
ters, done  by  himself,  very  pretty ;  and  we  were  both 
well  pleased  with  it.  But  I  am  also  this  year  my 
wife's  Valentine,  and  it  will  cost  me  five  pounds;  but 
that  I  must  have  laid  out  had  we  not  been  Valen- 
tines." 

Nowadays  there  aren't  any  of  these  seventeenth- 
century  paper  posies  left  except  in  the  lovely  verse 
of  those  days:  Waller's  and  Donne's  and  Drayton's; 
and  even  eighteenth-century  ones  are  very  rare.  As 
for  mine,  they  are  all  frankly  nineteenth-century, 
London-made :  one  pair  dating  back  almost  to  Water- 
loo; the  others,  for  the  most  part,  early  Victorian. 
The  first  pair  —  they  hang  in  the  "Prettiest  Room" 
—  are  the  oldest;  the  dress,  the  despair,  the  attitude 
of  that  melancholy  gentleman,  all  are  Byronic;  and,  as 
for  the  languishing  lady,  if  you  look  close  I  am  sure 
you  can  see  the  towers  of  Udolpho  in  the  distance. 
They  are  charmingly  colored  in  pinks  and  blues,  and 
the  first  border,  just  inside  the  heavier  embossed  edge, 
is  delicately  tinted  in  the  same  shades.  The  damsel 
sitting  in  a  bower  of  roses  (on  page  112),  with  the  ten- 
der missive  pressed  to  her  heart,  and  a  symbolic  bird- 


102  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

cage  hanging  on  the  trelHs,  is  a  Httle  later.  I  have 
seen  similar  costumes  dated  1831.  She,  too,  wears 
rose-pink,  and  I  cannot  imagine  a  happier  note  of 
color  for  the  walls  of  a  simple  bedroom.  The  feel- 
ing of  this  valentine  is  so  gratifyingly  of  the  times, 
also,  that  I  am  convinced  that  the  lady  adored 
"Childe  Harold"  and  wept  over  "Lalla  Rookh." 

The  Soldier  and  Sailor  pair  are  more  vivid  in  color; 
they  have  more  stamina;  in  their  rather  crude  reds 
and  blues  and  yellows  and  greens  they  need  the  sup- 
porting strength  of  a  black  frame,  just  as  the  others 
are  more  suitably  done  in  gilt.  They  are  quite  as 
naive,  however,  and  the  one  bit  of  mental  superiority 
is  the  verse.  I  am  quoting  the  sailor  stanzas  be- 
cause, while  they  are  very  characteristic  of  this  sen- 
timental epoch,  earmarked  by  sensibility,  they  are, 
nevertheless,  unusually  good  for  a  valentine.  Tom 
Moore  might  have  written  them  —  on  an  off  day. 

My  fond  one,  my  true  one  —  ere  yet  from  the  shore 
The  sails  shall  be  filled  and  the  tars  ply  the  oar, 
Ere  the  sails  of  your  vessel  be  spread  to  the  wind. 
Bethink  thee  the  true  heart  thou  leavest  behind. 

I  will  pray  for  thy  welfare  by  day  and  by  night  — 

In  the  darkness  of  storm  and  the  perils  of  fight. 

And  all  I  would  ask  in  my  fondness  for  thee. 

Is  that  sometimes  thy  thoughts  may  be  wandering  on  me. 

Farewell!  gallant  Sailor!  dear  Child  of  the  wave. 

In  the  storm  none  more  active  —  in  the  battle  more  brave. 

My  spirit  goes  with  thee  all  faithful  and  true. 

Adoring  and  loving  my  gallant  True  Blue! 


iinimiiinininiiuminnniniiiiiainitinitiniiiiiiniiinniiiiiiitniiCiiiriiiiiiiitiiim 


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ir  I 

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O 

OLD  VALENTINES  AND  SILHOUETTES  105 

The  other  pair,  the  second  sailor  and  the  pensive 
gentleman,  both  tone  on  the  brown  shades,  and  suit 
admirably  their  plain  mahogany  frames.  Indeed, 
with  a  little  care  in  the  selection  of  these  valentines, 
they  can  be  adapted  to  almost  any  simple  room — I 
do  not  pretend  that  they  have  any  of  the  qualifica- 
tions of  grandeur  —  I  have  found  them  even  in  a 
"languid  violet,"  a  delightful  color  for  experiment. 

Did  you  ever  know  that  silhouettes  were  sent  as 
valentines  .^^  I  did  not  until  I  saw  the  one  in  the  old 
gilt  frame  (on  page  107),  a  most  personal  tribute  of 
affection,  don't  you  think .^  It  would  appeal  to  me 
far  more  than  the  prettiest  valentine  to  be  bought; 
for,  to  quote  Mrs.  Ethel  Stanwood  Bolton's  opinion, 
which  is  precisely  my  own,  "a  silhouette  at  its  best 
is  a  thing  of  real  beauty  and  cleverness;  at  its  worst 
it  is  a  quaint  handicraft,  which  at  least  shows  the  dress 
and  the  manners  of  the  day."  I  know  a  collector, 
an  amateur  of  really  lovely  things,  whose  judgments 
are  valuable,  and  her  theory  is  that,  unless  silhouettes 
have  some  real  reason  for  being,  intimate  family 
pictures,  for  instance,  or  because  they  were  the  work 
of  one  of  the  mastercraftsmen  of  this  art,  they  had 
better  not  be  used.  She  dislikes  "rooms  full  of 
black  profiles,  all  welcomed  because  old."  Now,  to 
me,  partly  she  is  right  and  partly  she  is  wrong. 
Silhouettes  should  be  hung  most  sparingly  —  a  very 
few,  even  in  a  large  room;  and,  of  course,  every  one  of 
us  would  like  to  have  authentic  copies  of  the  best 


106  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

work  done  in  the  late  eighteenth  and  early  nine- 
teenth centuries.  But,  as  far  as  I  am  concerned,  a 
silhouette,  whether  cut  by  Mrs.  Pyburg  in  William 
and  Mary's  reign;  done  by  Miers  and  Field  of  Lon- 
don; a  creation  of  either  of  those  talented  youths, 
Master  Hubard  or  Master  Hanks;  achieved  by  that 
delightful  emigre  Monsieur  Edouart;  or  by  our  own 
American  genius,  William  Henry  Brown;  or,  on  the 
other  hand,  just  the  humble  production  of  some 
forgotten  artist  traveling  through  the  countryside; 
a  silhouette,  I  maintain,  will  to  me  always  have  the 
unique  charm  of  distant  days.  I  love  those  digni- 
fied gentlemen  with  their  austerely  aquilined  pro- 
files; those  little  ladies  and  their  tip-tilted,  flower- 
petal  noses.  Just  such  a  one  I  saw  recently  in  a 
Maine  antique  shop,  and  although  she  was  hanging 
between  a  very  good  Constitution  mirror  and  a 
hooded  highboy,  most  excellent  company,  I  feel 
that  I  ought  to  send  for  her  and  give  her  a  more 
domestic  milieu.  Of  course,  you  can't  adopt  every 
one  that  attracts  you,  though  two  orphans  did  ap- 
peal to  me  so  much  the  other  day  that  only  an  empty 
pocketbook  stood  between  me  and  my  maternal  in- 
stincts. Both  wore  long  pantalettes;  one  little  black 
figure  carried  a  whip,  the  other  a  reticule,  and  the 
dress  of  this  last  little  girl  was  not  black  at  all,  but 
an  inserted  strip  of  quaint  purple  silk.  A  fairly  un- 
usual type  this  is,  but  then,  one  of  the  beginning  mis- 
takes of  a  collector  is  to  imagine  that  a  silhouette  is 


Valentine  silhouette. 


Unknown  man  (1830'). 


Millie  Blake  (painted  glass  and 
gilt  frame). 


Silhouette  in  blue 
and  black. 


All  four  from  Dr.  Coburn's  collection. 


An  old  Connecticut 
ship-captain. 


Governor  Corner. 


"Lucy"  (pewter frame,  very 
rare  type). 


Lucetta  Williams  (framed 
in  ebony  and  gold). 


An  old  New  Hamp- 
shire school-master. 


OLD  VALENTINES  AND  SILHOUETTES  109 

only  a  profile  cut  out  of  black  paper  and  pasted  on  a 
white  background,  or  just  the  reverse.  On  the  con- 
trary, there  were  many  kinds:  done  with  brush  and 
India  ink  on  ivory,  plaster,  or  card  —  the  little  Di- 
rectoire  silhouette  with  its  rippled  profile  is  an  in- 
stance of  this  style;  painted  on  glass,  sometimes 
with  a  mixture  of  pine-soot  and  beer  to  give  an  in- 
tenser  blackness,  and  touched  delicately  with  gilt; 
the  charming  color  silhouettes;  and  the  rarest  and 
loveliest  type  of  all  according  to  connoisseurs  thus 
described  by  Mrs.  Bolton:  "The  likeness  painted  on 
convex  glass  in  such  a  way  that  one  did  not  look  di- 
rectly at  the  painted  face  to  see  the  silhouette,  but 
upon  a  white  card  behind  upon  which  the  shadow 
was  cast." 

Both  Edouart  and  Brown  became  so  popular  that 
they  had  made  a  set  of  lithographed  backgrounds  for 
what  might  be  called  their  "Great  Men  Series." 
John  Randolph  of  Roanoke  is  shown  standing  against 
a  characteristic  background,  one  which  he  might  well 
have  chosen  himself.  To  me  this  is  one  of  the  most 
revealing,  actual  silhouettes  I  know.  Look  at  it,  and 
see  if  it  is  not  like  what  one  of  his  personal  observers 
—  I  will  not  say  admirers  —  wrote  of  this  whimsical, 
bad-tempered,  witty  old  aristocrat.  "His  long,  thin 
legs,  about  as  thick  as  a  stout  walking  cane,  and  of 
much  such  a  shape,  were  encased  in  a  pair  of  tight 
small-clothes,  so  tight  that  they  seemed  part  and  par- 
cel of  the  limbs  of  the  wearer."     Standing  severely 


110  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

there,  you  can  almost  hear  him  rebuking  his  opponent, 
the  watch-maker  Congressman.  "Sir,  you  can  mend 
my  watch,  but  not  my  motions.  You  understand 
tictics,  sir,  but  not  tactics."  Perhaps  I  am  Hke 
Monsieur  Poirier:  it  may  be  that  I  Hke  my  pictures 
at  least  to  suggest  a  story.  That  is  why  I  am  so 
fond  of  silhouettes;  each  one  has  its  little  legend, 
whether  you  have  heard  it  or  not.  Certainly  all  that 
I  am  showing  you  have,  but  there  is  room  for  only 
one  more,  the  tender  tale  of  Millie  Blake.  When 
the  nineteenth  century  was  very  young  indeed  her 
sea-captain  husband  sailed  away  on  a  long,  long  voy- 
age, a  voyage  from  which  he  never  came  back.  Be- 
fore he  left  she  promised  that  every  night  a  candle 
should  burn  at  the  window  to  welcome  him  home; 
and,  every  night,  that  candle  burned,  not  only  dur- 
ing Millie's  life,  but  for  generations,  until  the  family 
died  out,  and  the  old  house  was  sold  to  strangers. 

And  so  my  advice  is  to  have  your  profiled  forebears 
if  you  can;  and,  if  you  cannot,  be  very  happy  to  hang 
some  other  body's  ancestors,  snipped  by  nimble, 
long-ago  scissors,  against  your  walls,  to  give  them 
charm  and  character. 


"The  feeling  of  this  valentine  is  so  gratifyingly  of  the  times 
that  I  am  convinced  that  the  lady  adored  'Childe  Harold'  and 
wept  over  '  Lalla  Rookh. ' " 


VIII 
OLD   GLASSWARE 

If,  Gentle  Readers,  you  should  learn  later  that  I 
am  languishing  in  a  county  jail,  you  must  under- 
stand that  it  is  all  your  fault.  You  see,  I  was  am- 
bitious; I  wanted  to  know  everything  that  could  be 
known  about  the  charming  old  glassware  that  you 
pick  up  now  and  again.at  sales  and  shops  and  auctions 
and  little  out-of-the-way  places.  And  such  informa- 
tion is  expensive;  a  body  can  have  but  an  academic 
knowledge  of  what  she  has  never  bought.  I  need  n't, 
I  am  sure,  go  on  with  my  sad  story.  As  yet  I  have  n't 
expended  any  vast  sums,  but  my  feet  are  firmly 
planted  on  the  downward  path,  for  old  glass  has  al- 
ways had  what  I  am  tempted  to  call  a  holy  fascina- 
tion for  me.  I  do  not  know  anything  more  engaging 
than  these  delicate  things  that  have  lived  so  long  — 
so  fragile,  yet  so  resisting  time;  nor  yet  anything  so 
eloquent  of  hospitality;  and,  if  I  am  being  ruined,  it 
is  in  a  high  cause. 

The  illustrations  and  my  words,  I  hope,  may  con- 
vert you,  also,  to  this  divine  madness,  but  better 
still  and  more  certain  would  be  examining  the  old 
pieces  themselves,  handling  them,  if  you  may,  for 
if  you  can  get  the  "feel"  of  the  texture,  you  are  on 
the  way  to  becoming  a  discriminating  collector. 
Indeed,  one  connoisseur  I  know  tells  me  that  there 


114  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

is  no  more  final  way  of  testing  old  glass  and  china 
than  by  touching  it  to  the  tongue  —  somewhat  after 
the  fashion  of  the  old-time  laundress  who  "tasted" 
her  irons  to  see  if  they  were  the  right  temperature. 
I  have  tried  this  honestly  and  with  my  eyes  shut,  but 
I  cannot  yet  tell  the  tongue-difference  between  a 
Lowestoft  cup  and  a  modern  piece  of  similar  size 
and  texture.  I  merely  give  it  to  you  for  what  it  is 
worth. 

There  is  n't  much  use  in  my  trying  to  write  the 
history  of  glassware  in  one  short  chapter,  is  there.'* 
If  you  don't  agree  with  me,  a  casual  stroll  through  the 
glass-rooms  of  the  Metropolitan  Museum  will  con- 
vince you,  I  am  sure.  You  all  know  that  the  art 
is  as  old  as  time  itself,  that  it  came  down  from  the 
early  Egyptian  days,  and  that  the  Phoenician  legend 
may  be  even  a  truth.  In  the  Museum  there  are 
several  pieces  of  Sidonian  glass,  and  one  cup,  a  dull 
amber-green,  bears  an  inscription  which,  translated, 
runs,  "Let  the  buyer  remember." 
.  Ah,  far-away,  dead-and-gone  buyer  in  that  distant 
time  and  town !  Truly,  "the  bust  outlasts  the  throne, 
the  coin  Tiberius."  And  the  Romans  used  glass,  so 
we  are  told  by  one  authority,  much  more  commonly 
than  we  do  now,  —  read  Machen's  "Hill  of  Dreams," 
and  see  how  beautifully  he  paints  its  color  and  love- 
liness, —  and,  where  they  colonized,  there  their  glass 
was  also  made.  Even  in  Great  Britain  there  are 
traces  of  Roman  glass-making,  and  the  fires  of  the 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Carleton. 


Early  nineteenth-century  glass  picked  up  in  northern  New  England. 
The  cruet  and  decanter  are  especially  interesting. 


Enameled  Stiegel  mug,  flower  and  pheas- 
ant design — an  unusually  fine  specimen  in 
"proof"  condition. 


I  imwnnMlMliimHHOnMMHmKiiimiiiiHKiiHitmuilDriniMuiflomimmwiMPimilliHHHiimwoimiMlHnimiluunmHimmnimimiMDmiiMHilo 


Collection  of  Shreve,  Crump  and  Low  Company. 

Waterford  glass,  late  eighteenth  century  —  unusually  fine  and 
stately  pieces,  beautifully  cut. 


Collection  of  Dr.  Coburn. 


Five  decanters,  each  one  of  a  pair,  two  cut,  one  Bohemian,  one  pressed, 
one  blown.  Notice  the  difference  in  the  decoration  and  in  the  varied  stopper 
shapes. 


OLD   GLASSWARE  117 

craft  died  down  and  burned  up  through  the  centu- 
ries, until  they  reached  a  steady  flame  of  excellence 
in  the  late  sixteen-hundreds.  You  have  heard  of  the 
glory  that  was  Venice  and  the  grandeur  that  was 
Bohemia;  but,  as  I  am  quite  sure  that  none  of  us 
are  going  to  discover  Portland  vases  or  authentic 
Verzellini  wine-glasses,  I  am  just  telling  you  the  short 
and  simple  annals  of  the  various  pieces  I  chose  to 
point  my  moral  and  adorn  my  collecting-tale.  For 
many  of  these  quaint  and  charming  pieces  were 
picked  up  here  and  there  through  the  New  England 
countryside,  and  the  first  group,  as  you  might  guess, 

is  L 's.     It  is  a  pity  that  you  cannot  see  more 

clearly  the  attractive  etched  festoons  that  adorn  the 
decanter,  the  wine-glasses,  and  the  little  cruet.     The 

tumbler  —  L has  a  pair  of  them  —  flares  slightly 

at  the  top,  and  is  decorated  only  with  a  ring  of  ridges, 
and  probably  all  five  pieces  are  early  nineteenth  cen- 
tury.    L owns  also  the  beautiful  Stiegel  mug. 

The  enameled  decorations,  pheasant  and  flower, 
naive  in  their  coloring,  sturdy  tones  of  green,  blue, 
yellow,  and  red,  are  perfectly  preserved,  and  as  clear 
as  they  were  the  day  they  came  from  the  glass- 
works of  "Baron"  Stiegel. 

What  an  interesting  human  being  he  was;  what 
an  individual  personality  he  has  written  into  the 
pages  of  America's  manufacturing  history!  Some 
day  you  must  read  Mr.  Hunter's  delightful  study  of 
this  man  and  all  his  works,  for  I  can  give  you  just 


118  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

the  barest  details.  Heinrich  Wilhelm  Stiegel  was 
born  near  Cologne  on  May  13,  1729,  and,  after  his 
father's  death,  came  to  America  with  his  mother  and 
younger  brother.  His  early  struggles,  his  connec- 
tion with  the  iron  business,  even  then  flourishing 
in  Pennsylvania,  his  marriage  to  his  master's  daugh- 
ter, his  increasing  prosperity,  his  magnificent  style  of 
living,  and  his  real  merit,  have  been  admirably  and 
accurately  related  by  Mr.  Hunter.  So  much  legend 
surrounds  the  man!  And  perhaps  he  was  not  all 
that  grandiloquent  tradition  testifies;  but  I  am  so 
glad  that  "The  Feast  of  Roses"  has  been  reestab- 
lished at  Mannheim,  where  he  erected  his  first  glass- 
house, and  created  an  artistic  craft,  in  itself  a  feather 
in  America's  commercial  cap.  You  see,  once  he 
cast  his  bread  upon  the  waters  by  canceling  the  debt 
of  the  Lutheran  church  there,  "one  red  rose  annually 
in  the  month  of  June  forever"  to  be  the  only  payment, 
and  now,  on  the  second  Sunday  in  June,  roses  are 
piled  within  the  chancel-rails  of  the  Zion  Lutheran 
church  at  Mannheim,  and  a  red  rose  is  sent  in  fee  to 
one  of  Baron  Stiegel's  descendants. 

He  brought  the  tradition  of  his  craft  from  Germany 
where  glass-making  had  been  an  art  for  centuries. 
I  realized  this  when  I  saw  at  the  Metropolitan  Mu- 
seum a  little  green  glass  pitcher  with  the  applied 
thread  design,  found  at  Cologne  and  dating  from  the 
third  century,  for  it  has  much  the  same  feeling,  color 


v- 


M' 


-> 


J 


Engraved  and  initialed 
white  fiint  Stiegel  tum- 
bler, with  a  short  baluster 
stem.  The  engraving  is 
unusually  good. 


Both  of  these  tumblers  are 
from  the  Hunter  collection  in 
the  Metropolitan  Museum. 


Collection  of  Dr.  Coburn. 

The  first  and  third  are  Stiegel  pieces,  the  other  two  the  later  type. 


lOWnmMtlNWimWCIHNUUIIKlimlUIMKllllHIIIMIQlllllIIIMClllU 


A  Sliegel  bottle  from 
the  Metropolitan  Mu- 
seum, known  to  have 
been  done  by  Sebastian 
Wilmer,  one  of  Baron 
Stiegel's  imported  work- 


White  flint  toddy-glass 
from  the  Hunter  collection, 
in  the  Metropolitan  Mu- 
seum. These  glasses  with 
tops  are  very  rare. 


p 

^Pt  ■       '^^1 

pS^!_^^^ 

-■; 

^^wnsf.,^ 

Collection  o; 


So-called  Stiegel  glass,  but  in  reality  made  in  the  early  nineteenth 
century.  From  the  inscriptions  on  the  mugs  they  may  have  been 
intended  for  children. 


tniiclixnmiHlQiimiiiiiircJtiriiimriiciriiimiiiiititi 


[miitnmMiM[iH[iimnMiiMniuniitiritniunmimc}m<MiiiMinnmiiimic)iimnmtinmriirmiiOfniiMtiiiiniiiiiiMiiiitiiiiiM 


OLD   GLASSWARE  121 

and  "air"  as  some  of  Stiegel's  own  work  made 
hundreds  of  years  later. 

He  even  imported  workmen,  —  the  lovely  flowered 
bottle  is  the  achievement  of  one  of  them,  Sebastian 
Witmer,  —  but  he  was  a  most  loyal  American,  and  it 
is  said  that  Elizabeth  Furnace  —  one  of  his  foundries 
and  named  for  his  first  wife  —  was  once  the  only 
place  where  Washington's  army  could  get  cannon- 
balls.  He  protested  vigorously  against  the  importa- 
tion of  foreign  goods,  and  it  was  a  keen  chagrin  to 
him  to  feel  that,  to  sell  his  wares  in  Boston  and  New 
York,  the  dealers  had  to  assure  their  customers  that 
they  came  from  across  the  water.  Baron  Stiegel's 
rise  was  rapid;  his  fall  even  swifter;  his  success,  while 
it  lasted,  phenomenal;  and  the  tragedy  of  it  is  that 
this  American  craftsman-genius  should  have  died  in 
utter  poverty,  and  been  buried  in  an  unknown  grave. 

Stiegel  died  in  1785,  but  the  feeling  of  this  enam- 
eled glass  that  he  introduced  lasted  on  until  the  nine- 
teenth century,  and  now  and  again  you  will  find 
pieces  of  this  type  sold  as  Stiegel.  But  while  they 
are  thoroughly  charming  with  their  gay  little  colors, 
and  certainly  related,  though  distantly,  they  are 
not  his  work  at  all.  The  group  of  two  tumblers 
flanked  by  the  two  taller  mugs  will  show  you  pre- 
cisely what  I  mean. 

Of  course,  glass-making  had  been  attempted  early 
in  the  history  of  our  colonization,  the  year  1607,  in 
Jamestown,  marking  the  first  venture.     It  is  said  that 


122  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

Italian  workmen  were  brought  over  to  assist  in  the 
enterprise.  But  no  definitely  good,  artistic  work 
was  accomplished  until  the  days  of  Wistar  and 
Stiegel  in  the  middle  eighteenth  century.  Glass 
was  imported  from  England  and  the  continent  as 
soon  as  the  settlers  had  adjusted  themselves  to  fairly 
secure  and  comfortable  lives,  and  continued  to  be 
imported,  as  I  said  before,  even  when  America  had 
created  a  craft  of  her  own.  The  magnificent  group 
of  cut-glass  epergne,  compotes,  and  sweetmeat  dishes 
(on  page  116)  is  old  Waterford,  and  though  they 
have  just  come  over,  they  are  precisely  what  our 
beauty-loving  ancestors  bought  when  they  could  af- 
ford them.  For  Waterford  in  Ireland  was  one  of 
the  glass-making  centres:  beautiful  cutting,  rather 
shallower  than  we  moderns  interpret  cut-glass,  was 
done  there  until  the  excise  duties  in  1825  killed  the 
industry.  And  "Venice  glasses,"  such  as  you  see  in 
the  long  rows,  were  constantly  imported  during  those 
early  days.  I  am  wondering  just  which  of  these 
patterns  is  like  the  ones  Samuel  Sewall  describes  in 
his  Diary.  "July  18th,  1687,  —  Mr.  Mather  had 
two  Venice  glasses  broken  at  our  Meeting."  Now, 
as  not  one  of  this  godly  company  could  be  described 
as  a  "lewd,  roistering  fellow,"  I  am  attributing  the 
destruction  to  the  sweeping  results  of  religious  fervor. 
Bristol  was  an  important  glass-centre,  too,  and 
the  late-eighteenth-century  decanters  (on  page  116) 
—  almost  the  finest   I  have  ever  seen  —  and  this 


From  the  Metropolitan  Museum. 


Fragile  Venetian  glasses,  delicately  shaped  and  charming  through 
their  bubble-like  transparency.     Notice  the  elaborate  stems. 


^)nnmmomHipiiiaiumaH«MmnHniUMiiiiiraoiiiiimin[»tiiiitiHHQimiiwint]iiiiiiMuiiammHiiiiniuiiirmiioimniimiaiiHiim 


I    Collection  of  Dr.  Coburn. 

Three  opaque  Bristol  pieces  quaintly  decorated. 


From  the  author's  collection. 


I       The  "Lafayette  decanters."      Late  eighteen^th-century  cut-glass  pieces 
i  from  Bristol,  England,  the  pattern  delightful  and  individual. 


f.^. 


OLD   GLASSWARE  125 

group  of  three  milky,  opaque  glasses  probably  came 
straight  from  that  city.  There  were  three  other 
decanters,  and  we  call  them  the  "Lafayette  decan- 
ters" because,  in  1824,  —  when  he  was  being  feted 
all  over  America,  —  the  set  was  sent  down  by  my 
ancestors  to  be  used  at  the  big  civic  banquet  given 
in  Nashville,  Tennessee,  in  his  honor.  These  three 
descended  to  my  side  of  the  family;  quite  perfect 
they  were,  too,  except  for  one  tiny  nick  on  the  further 
one,  and  that  happened  when  my  grandmother  kept 
open  house  during  the  Polk-Clay  campaign.  My 
mother  just  remembers  it;  she  was  a  tiny  thing  then, 
dancing  about  the  big  old  hospitable  Southern  yard, 
and  the  gay-colored  lanterns,  each  representing  a 
state,  —  a  yellow  one  for  "little  Rhody,"  —  hanging 
there  in  the  dusk  made  an  immense  impression  on  her 
childish  mind.  As  did,  also,  a  big  coon,  for  some 
reason  a  Clay  mascot,  running  up  and  down  and  rat- 
tling his  chain  in  the  tall  walnut  tree.  All  this  for 
the  "Clay  Guards,"  for  my  family  were  Old  Line 
Whigs ;  and  the  next  night  everything  was  darkened 
as  if  for  some  tragedy  when  the  "Polk  Fusileers" 
paraded  past  the  house.  They  still  tell  a  story  of 
their  captain  stopping  at  the  gate  to  ask  an  old  negro 
standing  beside  it  why  there  were  no  lights,  and  what 
his  master's  politics  were,  whereupon  the  darkey  an- 
swered, "I  disremember,  Sah,  but  I  knows  he  is 
what  you  isn't!"  Somehow,  these  decanters  seem 
to  me  to  hold  memories  as  glowing  as  the  wine  that 


126  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

has  filled  them.  Do  you  wonder  that,  in  their 
later  years,  they  are  treated  with  the  greatest  care 
and  consideration?  And  at  Bristol  they  still  make 
the  opaque  glass;  I  saw  a  piece  the  other  day,  more 
sophisticated,  but  I  do  not  think  possessing  any 
more  charm  than  these  quaint  scenes  that  resemble 
the  mediaeval,  red-roofed  Troy  Town  that  Swin- 
burne and  Rossetti  describe. 

Bristol,  too,  stands  sponsor  for  some  of  the  charm- 
ing eighteenth-century  wine-glasses,  of  all  things  my 
desire,  and  what  I  am  going  to  collect  as  soon  as  ever 
my  ship  comes  a-sailing  in.  England,  you  know, 
had  for  some  time  been  making  glass  successfully. 
A  Venetian,  one  Jacob  Verzellini,  worked  in  Crutched 
Friars,  under  a  patent  that  dated  from  1575  and  was 
to  last  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  There  are  three 
of  his  glasses  still  to  be  seen :  one  at  Windsor  Castle, 
the  other  two  in  the  British  Museum,  carefully 
preserved  as  very  precious  evidences  of  that  early 
glass-making  time.  Later,  the  Duke  of  Bucking- 
ham, always  interested  in  his  country's  manufactures, 
established  a  glass-furnace  at  Greenwich,  and  in 
1673  Evelyn  records  in  his  Diary,  "Thence  to  the 
Italian  house  at  Greenwich,  where  glass  was  blown 
of  a  finer  metal  than  that  of  Murano,  at  Venice"; 
and,  twelve  years  later,  he  notes,  "his  Majesty's 
health  being  drunk  in  a  flint-glass  of  a  yard  long." 

And  then  from  1690  to  1810  —  the  dates  are  ap- 
proximate only  —  these  delightful  wine-glasses  were 


OLD   GLASSWARE  127 

made:  baluster-stem,  plain-stem,  air-twist,  white- 
twist  and  cut.  There  they  are,  rather  roughly  clas- 
sified, and  the  bowls  are  even  more  numerous:  the 
Drawn,  Bell,  Waisted  Bell,  Straight-Sided,  Rect- 
angular, Ovoid,  Ogee,  Lipped  Ogee,  Double  Ogee,  and 
Waisted.  When  you  have  mastered  these  details,  you 
may  feel,  as  I  did,  very  much  as  the  White  Queen 
must  have  felt  when  she  had  "believed  as  many  as 
six  impossible  things  before  breakfast."  I  have  given 
you  such  a  list  of  names  that  I  almost  hesitate  to 
describe  the  types  of  feet;  but  I  will  risk  it,  for  there 
are  only  four  principal  ones:  Plain,  Folded,  Domed, 
and  Domed  Folded.  The  fold  was  to  give  additional 
strength,  the  dome  to  make  the  glass  sit  evenly  on 
the  table  and  keep  the  roughness  of  the  "pontil- 
mark"  from  scratching  the  wood.  And,  by  the  way, 
always  remember  this,  that  a  glass  with  a  pedigree 
has  a  "high  instep,"  and  if  you  find  one  very  flat- 
footed,  or,  except  on  the  cut-stems,  with  the  "pon til- 
mark"  ground  away,  the  chances  are  that  the  glass  is 
spurious.  For  fakers  are  beginning  to  copy  these  old 
wine-glasses  very  skilfully  indeed,  because  the  price 
that  the  genuine  glass  brings  is  temptingly  high  — 
so  very  high,  really,  that  nation-wide  prohibition 
assumes  the  aspect  of  a  twofold  blessing.  But  this 
for  our  comforting:  even  the  cleverest  copier  in  the 
world  cannot  reproduce  the  effect  of  that  silvery 
air-twist,  the  twist  that  grew,  perhaps  by  accident, 
out  of  the  adorning  "tear"  in  the  stem,  for  the  process 


128  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

has  been  lost,  and  we  are  safe  in  purchasing  that 
type  —  if  we  have  the  money ! 

I  have  a  theory  which  I  hope  you  share.  All  of  us, 
at  least  all  of  us  with  romantic  tendencies,  no  matter 
what  our  political  principles,  are  Jacobites  at  heart, 
are  n't  we?  I  know  that  you  would  have  rejoiced 
with  me  in  a  very  fine  collection  of  Jacobite  glasses 
that  I  have  just  seen:  glasses  that  Harry  Esmond, 
before  he  broke  his  sword  and  renounced  his  alle- 
giance, might  have  drunk  from  as  he  toasted  "The 
King  over  the  water";  glasses  engraved  with  the 
oak  tree,  thistle,  and  the  Stuart  rose  with  its  two 
buds,  emblematic  of  James  the  Second  and  the  Old 
and  Young  Pretender;  even  with  the  portrait  of 
"Bonnie  Prince  Charhe"  himself.  Others  were 
inscribed  with  "Fiat"  (the  Cycle  Club's  motto), 
"Redeat"  and  "Audentior  Ibo,"  each  earnest  of  the 
hope  that  breathes  in  the  old  Scotch  song  "Better 
lo'ed  ye  canna  be;  will  ye  no  come  back  again .f^" 
And  would  n't  you  like  to  own  some  of  those  dram- 
glasses  (on  page  130),  fashioned  of  lead-glass,  thick 
and  heavy  at  the  bottom .^^  "Firing-glasses"  they 
were  called,  because  of  the  noise  they  made  when 
the  roisterers  thump-thumped  them  on  the  table 
in  applause.  Would  n't  they  make  you  see  the  long, 
smoke-filled  room,  the  hospitable  board,  and,  through 
the  haze,  Tom  Jones  and  Humphrey  Clinker  and  the 
beloved  Uncle  Toby  sitting  there  .^ 

Of  course,  all  inscribed  glasses  are  not  Jacobite;  I 


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jiiriiuiumuit)«umnii»IMuuiiin»Hiuum]iiirluuimiinf1Mriiimmi»mmniiinb murTumimnityiHirilllf'T" ""Itmr'ftf^ 


~WllllHlllttWtlllllllllUHItUII>IUUIUHUIIIIiUmilllllUIUtlllinillllClHlllltl>inUHIIIIIIMIlU)MI»MllltUIHniUmUlNWIItlHllWIIHIHIHL»IW 


OLD   GLASSWARE  131 

am  thinking  of  one  —  such  a  slender  glass  —  in  this 
same  collection,  engraved  "Herte  be  true."  The  gift 
of  some  lover  to  his  lass,  maybe;  but,  just  to  show 
you  that  all  sentiment  was  not  confined  to  the 
mother-country,  let  me  tell  you  of  a  pair  of  engraved 
flip-glasses,  large  ones,  that  live  in  one  of  Mr.  Francis 
Bigelow's  loveliest  cabinets.  The  first  is  marked 
"John,"  the  second  "Mary."  Now,  who  was  it  that 
defined  domestic  happiness  as  "two  pairs  of  feet  on 
the  fender.'^"  I  constantly  think  of  this  happy  Co- 
lonial couple,  sitting  together  before  a  blazing  hearth, 
with  these  glasses  full  of  steaming  flip,  rocking  and 
sipping  in  harmony. 

Collecting  old  glass  is  such  a  joy !  Once,  in  a  little, 
shabby  suburban  shop,  I  found  a  charming  decanter; 
early  nineteenth  century,  cut  a  little,  engraved  a  great 
deal  —  and  I  gave  it  away  to  one  of  the  most  at- 
tractive women  I  know,  a  friend  who  loves  old  glass 
quite  as  much  as  I  do.  And  parting  with  it  was  n't 
a  pang,  really,  because  my  collecting  creed  tells  me 
that  you  must  never  keep  what  you  could  not  give 
away,  nor  give  away  anything  that  you  would  not 
willingly  keep.  Another  "find"  is  the  cut  and  en- 
graved cruet  (on  page  133),  which  might  be  either 
Spanish  or  Dutch,  for  both  countries  so  reacted  on 
each  other.    It  is  one  of  the  finest  pieces  of  glass 

I  ever  saw,  and  D and  I  bought  it  for  a  song  — 

an  expensive  song!  You  could  buy  several  Caruso 
records  for  what  we  paid  —  in  a  little,  dark  downstairs 


132  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

shop  on  an  ancient  side-street  that  used  to  be  one 
of  the  "green  lanes  of  North  Boston." 

And  those  big,  browny-oHve  bottles  with  their 
rough  pontil-niark  at  the  bottom  can  so  often  be 
picked  up  at  country  auctions.  One  such  time  is  as 
indeUbly  engraved  on  my  memory  as  the  designs  on 
those  old  glasses  I  have  been  showing  you.  My 
first  auction  it  was,  too,  and  I  think  I  have  never 
seen  so  many  desirable  things  all  together  at  once  at 
any  other  country  sale:  a  Hepplewhite  secretary, 
slat-back  chairs,  copper-lustre  pitchers,  a  Nanking 
coffee-pot,  —  I  got  that!  —  a  little,  squat,  jolly  brown 
"Toby," — ^  the  only  piece  of  Bennington  I  ever 
wanted,  —  and  this  lovable,  old,  fat,  green  bottle. 
We  were  terribly  excited,  R being  especially  agi- 
tated. He  had  motored  miles  to  get  that  Benning- 
ton "Toby,"  and  he  meant  to  have  it.  The  desire 
of  his  whole  collector's  soul  shone  eloquently  in  his 
eyes.  The  bottle  was  put  up  for  sale  first,  and  he 
bought  that.  Then,  clasping  it  in  his  arms,  he  sat 
awaiting  the  Bennington  treasure  —  and  near  a 
Franklin  stove!  Here  is  the  crux  of  the  tragedy; 
here,  perhaps,  you  discern  the  beginning  of  the  end. 

Up  and  up  went  the  bidding,  and,  finally,  as  R 

stretched  out  trembling,  triumphant  hands  to  seize 
his  trophy,  he  knocked  the  bottle  against  the  edge 
of  the  stove,  and  crash,  smash,  like  the  "Luck  of 
Edenhall,"  went  all  that  old  greeny  glass  in  fragments 
at  his  feet!     So,  you  see,  you  must  remember  when 


Collection  of  Francis  Bigelow. 

An  interesting  group,  two  flip  glasses  and  a  celery  holder, 
all  beautifully  engraved. 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Carr. 


Cut  and  engraved  Spanish  or  Dutch  cruet.  A  very  fine  and  dignified 
piece  standing  twelve  inches  high.  The  sides  are  slightly  flattened  and 
beautifully  decorated. 


Courtesy  of  Metropolitan   Musrum. 

These  quaint  old  browny  green  bottles  have 
charming  decorative  qualities. 


Collection  of  Dr.  Coburn. 


Five  flip  glasses,  each  also  one  of  a  pair.     The  second  with  its  toddy 
stick  is  very  interesting. 

iiii»««iniiiiiiniiiKiim»nii«nim»nii«niminiiirepniiiiiniin™iiimnniciiimiiiiniiiuii»i»a miiiionmiiimici "iimlj, 

.umimuinimiiiiiiiicinriiiitiiiiiwmiiiniiaiMnitiiHininNimMianinmiiMCjmiMiiiMUMmMiHiaitimmiticaMiiiiwlt  *^ 


OLD   GLASSWARE  135 

you  buy  one  of  these  ancient  bottles  to  be  very  care- 
ful. Remember,  too,  that  they  are  delightful  recep- 
tacles for  certain  flowers,  the  hardy,  homely  sort: 
roses  are  too  delicate,  but  pink  phlox,  pink  snap- 
dragon, and,  above  all,  pink  peonies,  become  their 
naive,  simple  quality  admirably. 

When  I  was  a  small,  wondering  girl  I  used  to  stop, 
caught  by  the  rainbow  beauty  of  the  iridescent  Cy- 
press glass  in  the  Museum,  and  dream  over  this  love- 
liness that  had  outlasted  the  ages.  Now  I  know  that 
my  youthful  enthusiasm  meant  that  I  should  live 
one  of  the  most  ardent  protestants  to  be  of  all  charm- 
ing antique  glassware. 


IX 

OLD  WHITE  COUNTERPANES 

Again  I  have  been  darning  a  coverlet,  this  time  a 
fine  Hnen,  creamed  with  age.  It  was  made  for  my 
great-grandmother,  woven  under  her  careful  direc- 
tion in  East  Tennessee  when  the  nineteenth  century 
was  in  its  first  quarter.  I  know  even  about  the  nim- 
ble black  fingers  that  embroidered  the  design,  for 
they  belonged  to  "Mammy  Fanny,"  who,  later, 
came  to  Nashville  with  the  "young  Mistress,"  my 
grandmother,  and  was  my  own  mother's  special 
nurse.  A  very  close  bond  existed  there,  I  think,  for 
all  my  life  I  remember  hearing  stories  about  this  tall, 
dignified  negress  who  was  really  a  personality,  and 
who  wore  her  bandanna  handkerchief  bound  around 
her  head  with  almost  Oriental  pride.  And  so  kind  to 
the  children  she  was,  so  devoted  to  them,  that,  when 
offered  her  freedom  and  a  chance  to  go  to  Liberia, 
she  absolutely  refused  to  leave  the  little  things  she 
had  loved  and  "raised."  I  know  that,  if  I  had  been 
a  Northerner  at  that  time,  I  should,  also,  have 
been  a  mad,  impassioned  abolitionist,  otherwise  my 
present  liberalism  means  nothing;  but  I  cannot  help 
knowing,  too,  that  the  South  held  much  happiness 
and  frank  affection  and  old  memories  that  are  very 
sacred.  That  is  one  reason  why  I  love  my  counter- 
pane; the  other  is  because  it  is  beautiful,  —  well,  per- 


OLD   WHITE   COUNTERPANES         137 

haps  rather  engagingly  pretty,  —  with  its  somewhat 
sketchy  embroidery,  —  a  Httle  after  the  manner  of  an 
ancient  "lazy  daisy"  stitch,  —  the  whole  effect  being 
that  of  a  wandering  vine-pattern  and  a  central  basket 
of  flowers  that  is  verj^  much  like  the  designs  Stiegel 
etched  on  his  toddy-mugs  and  flip-glasses.  Un- 
fortunately photography  will  reproduce  only  pat- 
terns standing  in  bolder  relief,  so  you  must  take  its 
prettiness  on  trust  until  you  see  it  upon  my  carved 
Empire  bed.  In  the  meantime  I  shall  be  bleaching 
it:  when  the  dog-days  are  done  and  all  danger  of 
mildew  is  past,  I  shall  put  it  out  on  the  grass  and  let 
the  bright  suns  of  early  autumn  and  the  racing  winds 
whiten  it  magically  for  me.  First  you  wet  the  web^ 
of  course,  and  then,  when  it  is  dry,  you  wet  it  again; 
and  wise  ladies  tell  me  that  this  old-world  way  is 
infinitely  superior  to  any  amount  of  soap,  or  even 
what  we  call  hereabouts  "elbow-juice."  It  is  better 
really  than  the  freezing-bleaching  process,  for  that  is 
apt  to  weaken  the  strands  of  the  fabric.  My  cover- 
let and  my  Empire  bed  are  about  the  same  age,  and 
they  will  go  "  companionably  "  together.  I  've  worked 
so  hard  to  dress  that  bed  properly!  You  see,  so 
many  quite  charming  old  beds  suddenly  lose  this 
charm  of  theirs  because  the  right  things  are  not  put 
on  them;  sometimes  a  counterpane  that  makes  the 
bed  look  as  if  an  old  lady  were  masquerading  in  her 
granddaughter's  clothes.  Maybe  that  comparison 
is  n't  worth  much  nowadays  in  our  present  terms  of 


138  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

fashion,  but  you  understand,  don't  you?  And  then, 
when  the  coverlet  is  all  right,  the  pillow-shams  are 
all  wrong.  That  mine  are  right  comes  by  the  luck 
of  discovery,  for  I  found  the  pattern  in  a  little  old 
house  way  up  in  the  Vermont  hills;  and  because 
so  many  people  have  asked  me  just  how  they 
were  made,  and  I  think  you  might  like  to  know,  too, 
I  am  passing  the  directions  on  to  you.  I  made  mine 
from  very  fine  longcloth,  though  I  think  linen  would 
be  better,  and  fine-meshed  dimity  a  pretty  alterna- 
tive. The  length  is  thirty-five  inches,  the  width 
twenty  and  a  quarter,  —  of  course,  these  measure- 
ments are  not  rigid,  they  can  be  adapted  to  any 
size  pillow  you  wish,  — -  and  the  adornment  is  little, 
frilly  ruffles,  ruffles  gathered  in  the  centre  and  spaced 
three  inches  apart.  The  gathering  of  the  first  frill 
comes  at  the  edge  of  the  sham  which  makes  it  a  little 
less  bulky  in  effect;  and  when  they  are  freshly  ironed 
they  are  the  prettiest,  quaintest  things  you  can  im- 
agine. But  they  are  hard  to  do  up;  sometimes  I 
think  I'll  get  myself  a  "goffering-iron."  Like 
"dear  Mrs.  Tiggy winkle's,"  you  know.  Don't  you 
remember,  in  that  charming  tale,  how  she  took  little 
Lucie's  pinny,  "and  ironed  it  and  goffered  it  and  shook 
out  the  frills".'^  As  I  have  a  house  that  much  re- 
sembles Mrs.  Tiggy  winkle's,  I  think  it  would  be  most 
appropriate. 

There  is  infinite  variety  in  these  old  white  coun. 
terpanes.     L has  three  delightful  old-fashioned 


^jniMnimjnmflHiHniimHMHOiiiuiiiwuiHumimatiHiimHiatmmimoiiKMmtiamnmiiiiumHimiHamHiiiMitiinmimHU^^^ 


i  Collection  of  Mrs.  Carleton. 

I  Old  quilted  counterpane  done  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
I  The  design  was  drawn  by  a  Hungarian  exile,  a  follower  of  Kossuth.  The 
work  is  very  fine  and  beautiful. 


lOmmmmamtimiiJiQiiimiiiHiniiiuMiiiiiQmiuiiHHnmiitirnMCiiiiriMhiiiciMmHnriCMHirHHuciiriiniiiiiinni^^ 


OLD  WHITE  COUNTERPANES         141 

beds,  and  an  entirely  different  type  of  spread  rests 
on  each  one.  The  first  —  again  I  rail  at  the  inad- 
equacies of  photography,  for  half  of  its  fine  loveli- 
ness does  not  show  —  is  one  of  the  most  charming, 
intricate  pieces  of  needle-craft  that  I  have  ever  seen, 

worthy  even  of  L 's  Hepplewhite  room,  and  that 

is  high  praise.  To-day,  as  I  looked  at  it,  the  dear  lady 
who  had  quilted  it  said,  "I  wish  I  had  a  penny  for 
every  stitch  I  took  in  it " ;  and  I  felt  that  if  she  had,  she 
would  be  rich  beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice.  Those 
tiny,  tiny  stitches!  Do  you  suppose  we  shall  ever 
again  rise  to  such  apotheoses  of  sewing.^  And  the 
design  has  an  interesting  story.  It  was  drawn  a  num- 
ber of  years  before  it  was  quilted,  by  an  Hungarian 
exile,  a  follower  of  Kossuth,  who  had  drifted  to  this 
country,  and  who  turned  his  native  talent  of  music 
into  a  profession,  and  gave  lessons  to  support  himself. 
He  drew  a  number  of  these  patterns  for  his  pupils, 
and  this  one  embodies  both  America  and  Hungary. 
In  the  centre  is  the  eagle  of  his  adopted  country,  with 
the  thirteen  stars  above  and  "E  Pluribus  Unum" 
below,  and  in  the  corners  is  an  Hungarian  motif. 
Above  and  below  the  eagle  are  graceful  cornucopias, 
but  whether  they  were  symbolic  of  the  plenty  that  he 
found  in  his  adopted  country  or  of  what  he  hoped  for 
his  native  land,  tradition  has  never  told  me. 

The  second  is  a  quilted  counterpane,  too,  and  this 
adorns  such  a  slender,  fluted  mahogany  "four- 
poster"  with  a  field  canopy.     The  work  is  less  fine. 


142  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

but  it  is  very  nearly  as  handsome ;  if  I  liked  to  apply 
so  very  modern  a  word  as  "stunning"  to  an  old 
counterpane,  I  think  I  might  call  it  that.  It  is,  also, 
a  very  unusual  type,  and  very  attractive  in  the  man- 
ner in  which  the  padded  pattern  stands  out  against  the 
quilted  surface.     It  began  life  way,  way  up  in  these 

Northern  hills,  and  its  owner,  before  L bought  it, 

was,  in  spite  of  the  possession  of  this  lovely  bit  of  age, 
most  mid- Victorian  in  her  tastes.  Her  house  was 
adorned  with  the  many,  many  things  she  had  made 
and  painted  and  decorated;  but  they  were  her  idea 
of  beauty  and  she  was  very  happy  in  them,  and,  since 
innocent  human  happiness  is  one  of  the  ends  of  life, 
I,  for  one,  shan't  grudge  them  to  her.  You  know, 
often  in  the  countryside  you  will  still  find  such  odd 
embellishments:  roses  made  out  of  leather,  and  so 
on,  which  are,  I  suppose,  the  rural  equivalent  of  the 
gilded  plaster  lion;  once,  even,  I  saw  one  of  the 
framed  coffin-plates  that  everybody  insists  are  found 
only  in  stories.  I  almost  wept  with  joy  when  I  beheld 
this  vindication  of  literature;  I  did  n't  want  to  own 
it,  of  course,  but  I  felt  so  grateful  once  to  have  wit- 
nessed this  concrete  symbol  of  Victorian  gloom. 

As  for  L 's  third  coverlet,  I  am  not  sure  that  it 

is  not  my  greatest  favorite  of  all,  the  design  is  so  grace- 
ful, so  symmetrical.  It  is  what  is  known  as  a  candle- 
wicking  spread,  in  other  words,  a  counterpane  made 
usually  of  a  homespun  linen  (or  cotton  sometimes), 
with  the  tufted  design  worked  in  candle-wicking  or 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Carleton. 

Quilted  white  counterpane  with  the  padded  design  standing  in  very  bold 
relief.     An  especially  handsome  and  effective  piece. 


n..,, ,«., 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Carleton. 

L 's  candle-wicking  spread.     Less  intricate  than  some  of  the  others  in 

design,  it  is,  nevertheless,  very  graceful  and  symmetrical. 


'"    -i 


OLD  WHITE  COUNTERPANES  145 

a  full  cotton  yarn.  Now  I  dislike  more  than  any- 
thing  else  to  be  academic;  I  dipped  candles  that  I 
might  tell  you  about  them,  and  I  am  "drawing-in" 
a  rug  after  an  old  pattern  so  that  I  may  be  really 
intelligent  about  it  and  practical  in  my  advice.  But 
I  simply  cannot  stop,  my  dear  Friends  in  Collecting, 
to  make  a  candle-wicking  spread  so  that  I  shall  be 
qualified  to  tell  you  exactly  how  it  is  done.  How- 
ever, I  have  been  talking  to  past  mistresses  of  this 
art  and  taking  experimental  stitches,  just  enough  to 
keep  my  counsel  from  being  pure  theory.  I  think 
that  the  task  must  have  been  easier  in  bygone  times, 
for  then  candle-wicking  was  more  durable  and 
firmer;  the  stuff  they  sell  nowadays  being  quite  *'no 
account."  And  it  will  have  to  be  vigorously  bleached, 
for  it  is  rather  a  dark  ecru;  at  least  all  that  I  have 
been  able  to  get  is  very  far  from  white.  Then  you 
will  need  your  counterpane  carefully  marked  with  a 
chosen  design,  —  this,  I  am  told,  is  the  most  difficult 
part,  —  an  embroidery  or  darning-needle  with  an 
eye  large  enough  to  take  in  a  thread  of  candle-wick- 
ing which  must  be  used  doubled,  and  endless  pa- 
tience! If  the  cloth,  whether  linen  or  cotton,  is  un- 
bleached, the  work  will  be  easier,  for  then  the  threads 
will  not  have  to  be  tied  before  shearing.  The  proc- 
ess really  is  not  unlike  *'drawing-in"  a  rug,  if  you 
have  ever  done  that;  the  weight  of  the  wicking  holds 
it  in  place,  you  see.  I  meant  to  gather  m@re  informa- 
tion for  you :  to  walk  across  our  blue  watered  ribbon 


146  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

of  a  river  into  our  next-door  state  —  I  always  feel 
a  queer  little  thrill  of  surprise  at  being  able  to  be  in 
two  states  almost  simultaneously !  —  and  talk  to  an 
old  lady  there  who  has  made  a  number  of  these 
counterpanes.  I  have  never  seen  them,  but  I  know 
that  they  must  be  attractive,  for  she  herself  is  so 
very  pleasant,  and  so  full  of  the  joy  of  life  that,  over 
seventy,  she  seems  about  fifty-five.  But,  instead,  I 
went  to  an  old-furniture  sale,  and  I  know  you  will 
forgive  me  when  I  tell  you  that  I  bought  three  lovely 
pieces  of  old  glass  for  fifteen  cents,  and  a  prettily 
turned  light-stand  for  seventy-five,  and  two  silver- 
plated  cups  of  chaste  design  and  beautiful  engraving 
for  so  little  that  I  am  ashamed  to  tell  you  just  how 
little  it  was,  although  the  prices  were  already  set  and 
I  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  them.  My  one 
comfort  was  that  the  uninteresting  modern  pieces 
were  selling  for  such  magnificent  sums;  it  made  me 
feel  less  guilty.  And,  as  I  brought  my  treasures 
home,  another  happiness  was  mine,  for  I  was  lighted 
by  a  round,  pale  moon  just  climbing  over  the  hori- 
zon. Personally  I  like  a  great  bubble-moon  walking 
through  the  high  heavens  with  dignity ;  I  had  not  the 
faintest  desire  for  Merlin's  power  to  hurry  her,  scud- 
ding, through  the  clouds.  Rather  I  delighted  in  her 
calm,  and  at  home,  when  I  had  polished  my  cups,  I 
took  them  out  of  doors  to  see  how  much  more  silver 
the  silver  moonlight  made  them. 

Moonlight,  broad  stretch  of  meadows  and  such  peace! 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Patten. 

The  candle-wicking  spread  E — —  made.     Notice  the  resemblance  to  the 
one  that  follows. 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Patten. 

The  old  candle-wicking  spread  that  E used  as  her  model. 

ually  large  and  handsome  one. 


An  unus- 


llllimCHlimiirilltWIHIUHIKMMMHKt!^ 


OLD   WHITE   COUNTERPANES        149 

And  I  loved  my  little  house,  the  little  house  full  of 
my  dear  things,  with  its  background  of  black  velvet 
shadows,  its  vine-trimmed  porch,  its  banded  phlox. 
That 's  what  I  mean  by  the  joy  of  collecting:  it 
weaves  such  a  pleasant  pattern  of  life  for  you. 

But  why  do  I  speak  of  these  coverlets  as  all  in  the 

past.'*     E made  one  only  a  year  or  so  ago,  and 

here  it  is,  an  infinitely  laborious  counterpane,  copied, 
or  perhaps  I  should  say  modeled,  on  the  old  one  that 
follows.  It  took  her  six  months  to  do  it;  of  course, 
I  suppose,  she  did  n't  work  night  and  day  on  it,  but 
I  fancy  it  was  pretty  steady  "pick-up"  work.  She 
tufted  the  centre  design  first,  and  then  worked  the 
connecting  lines,  corners  and  festoons.  The  fringe, 
she  confessed,  she  found  the  hardest  part  of  all,  for 
she  took  one  whole  summer  doing  it,  finally  getting  a 
stick  and  knotting  the  wicking  over  and  over,  rather 
after  the  fashion  of  a  fisherman  making  nets.  We 
marveled  at  her  when  it  was  done,  but  so  far  as  I 
know  she  has  never  had  the  flattery  of  imitation. 
Most  of  us  think  it  looks  like  a  life-work.     But  then 

E is  a  specialist  in  coverlets;    she  has  so  many 

charming  ones:  three  candle-wicking  and  three 
others. 

Of  course,  I  am  always  hoping  that  some  day  I 
shall  have  one  of  these  tufted  candle-wicking  spreads 
of  my  own,  but  I  have  not  yet  found  one  with  the 
necessary  three  dimensions,  by  which  I  mean  a 
spread  that  measures  itself  at  once  to  my  bed,  my 


U6  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

fancy,  and  my  pocketbook.  At  times,  you  know, 
you  can  get  such  bargains;  I  have  seen  good  ones 
sold  for  ten,  and  sometimes  even  five  dollars.  Once 
I  bought  one  for  a  small  bed  for  a  dollar  and  a  quarter. 
The  pattern  was  not  done  in  the  thickest  tufting,  but 
really  quite  an  engaging  eagle  set  in  circles  was  out- 
lined in  the  centre.  And  when  you  think  how  much 
you  have  to  pay  for  just  a  plain  seersucker  spread, 
you  may  agree  with  me  that  I  got  a  bargain. 

And  I   also   desire  one  like  this   counterpane  of 

E 's  done  in  flat,  unsheared  candle-wicking,  so 

that  the  effect  is  almost  that  of  cross-stitch.  It  is 
really  very  charming,  with  the  beauty  of  a  well-done 
sampler,  and  a  little  irregularity  that  guarantees  the 
genuineness  of  its  handiwork.  Moreover,  it  is  one 
of  the  oldest  that  I  have  known  to  be  found  here- 
abouts. Down  in  one  corner,  if  you  look  very 
closely,  you  can  see  the  initials  of  its  worker,  L.  D.  D., 
and  the  date,  1822.  I  have  seen  one  dated  1815, 
but  nothing  earlier,  and,  as  it  is  the  older  ones  that 
are  usually  dated,  I  have  formed  a  theory  that  the 
candle-wicking  spread  was  a  fashion  of  the  very  early 
nineteenth  century.  At  least,  I  have  never  found 
any  evidence  to  convince  me  that  they  were  made  in 
the  eighteenth. 

But  the  embroidered  counterpane  was  undoubtedly 
made  then,  for  it  is  full  of  the  feeling  of  the  delicate, 
charming  "  chinoiserie "  that  so  much  dominated 
domestic  art  in  those  days.     Deepened  by  time,  it 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Patten. 

The  "cross-stitch"  candle-wicking  spread.     Notice  the  quaint  formality 
of  its  pattern,  and  the  initial  and  date  in  the  corner. 


Collictiuii  of  Mrs.  Patten. 

Eighteenth-century  linen  spread  embroidered  in  soft  wools.  The  design 
is  full  of  the  delightful  "chinoiserie "  that  so  influenced  English  needlework 
during  that  time. 


miiuiiwmiuiaiiwtiiiuiuiuimmucuHUMinuiiiiuimiaMniwiianiiiuwuaiiuimmiainiiuuiliuiiniuiuiiu 


OLD  WHITE   COUNTERPANES         153 

is  almost  ecru  in  tone,  this  lightly  quilted  founda- 
tion of  linen,  and  the  flowers  are  embroidered  on  it 
in  fine  wools:   deep  roses,  greens,  yellows,  and  blues. 

I  was  never  more  surprised  than  when  E pulled 

it  out  of  its  hiding-place.  She  said  afterwards  that 
she  had  always  remembered  "  seeing  it  round,"  though 
she  had  n't  the  faintest  idea  of  its  early  history.  To 
have  so  charming  a  possession  and  not  parade  it! 
For  it  is  as  lovely  as  the  sprigged  surface  of  a  fine 
porcelain  cup  made  long  and  long  ago;  an  "Orien- 
tale  "  of  cloth  delightful  as  Cesar  Cui's  music.  I  know 
I  should  have  made  it  a  subject  of  conversation, 
even  if  nobody  was  talking  antiques.  You  can  al- 
ways stamp  your  foot  and  speak  of  guns,  you  know. 
In  the  past  these  hand-wrought  household  gods 
were  very  close  to  the  hearts  of  their  happy  owners, 
I  think,  and  history  bears  me  out.  In  reading  Gov- 
ernor Winthrop's  Diary  I  ran  across  this  quaint, 
illuminating  passage.  "  A  godly  woman  of  the  church 
of  Boston,  dwelling  sometimes  in  London,  brought 
with  her  a  parcel  of  linnen  of  great  value,  which  she 
set  her  heart  too  much  upon,  and  had  been  at  charge 
to  have  it  all  newly  washed  and  curiously  folded 
pressed,  and  so  left  it  in  press  in  her  parlour  over 
night;  she  had  a  negro  maid  went  into  the  room  very 
late  and  let  fall  some  snuff  of  the  candle  upon  the 
linnen,  so  as  by  the  morning  all  the  linnen  was  burned 
to  a  tinder,  and  the  boards  underneath,  and  some 
stools  and  a  part  of  the  wainscot  burnt,  and  never 


154  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

perceived  by  any  in  the  house,  tho'  some  lodged  in 
the  chamber  overhead,  and  no  ceihng  between; 
but  it  pleased  God  that  the  loss  of  this  linnen  did 
her  much  good,  both  in  taking  off  her  heart  from 
worldly  comforts,  and  in  preparing  her  for  a  far 
greater  affliction  by  the  untimely  death  of  her  hus- 
band who  was  slain  not  long  after  at  the  Isle  of 
Providence."  The  "preparing "  loss  of  that  cherished 
linen  has  always  seemed  to  me  quite  as  pathetic  as 
amusing. 

And  now  I  am  come  to  my  last  counterpane.  I 
think  I  am  very  like  a  small  child;  I  invariably  save 
the  icing  of  my  cake  for  the  end.  And  this  time  you 
are  to  share  my  pleasure  with  me.  I  have  never 
seen,  nor  expect  to  see,  so  beautiful  a  spread  as  this 
last  one  I  am  showing  you.  The  delicate,  cream- 
toned  linen  on  which  the  design  is  worked  has  a  little 
line  running  through  it,  and  is  a  delightful  piece  of 
old  hand-weaving.  It  is  much  larger  than  any  others 
I  have  found,  and  the  pattern  is  thicker,  fuller,  more 
impressive  in  its  work.  When  I  hung  it  up  to  have 
it  photographed,  it  had  all  the  beauty  of  a  fine,  an- 
tique bas-relief.  And  it  came  to  me  in  the  most  ro- 
mantic way.  For  once  before  I  made  public  lamenta- 
tion that  I  had  never  found  a  candle-wicking  spread 
to  suit  my  Empire  bed,  and  some  months  later  I  got 
a  letter  from  a  little  old  lady  miles  and  miles  away  in 
a  state  farther  south,  who  asked  me  if  I  would  like 
to  buy  this  one;  that  it  did  not  fit  any  bed  she  owned. 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Carr. 

The  finest  candle- wicking  spread  I  have  ever  seen.     Notice  the  depth  and 
the  symmetry  of  the  design. 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Patten. 

Old  knitted  spread  of  the  "fan"  pattern.     A  very  charming,  delicate  piece 
of  work  indeed. 


OLD   WHITE   COUNTERPANES         157 

and  that  she  had  nobody  to  leave  it  to  when  she  died. 
Later  she  wrote  me  its  history.  Now,  first  I  must 
tell  you  that  Brigham  Hill,  with  the  old  white  house 
atop  of  it  and  its  file  of  maple  trees,  lies  across  that 
blue,  dividing  river  perhaps  two  miles,  as  the  crow 
flies,  from  where  I  live.  The  linen  of  the  counterpane 
had  been  woven  by  the  little  old  lady's  great-grand- 
mother Brigham,  the  design  drawn  by  Polly  Hutchin- 
son and  the  tufted  embroidery  done  by  Lydia  Brig- 
ham! All  of  these  surnames  are  still  to  be  found  in 
this  little,  nearly  forgotten  village;  the  old  counter- 
pane had  just  wandered  home  again.  Is  n't  that  a 
collecting  coincidence  for  you.^^  But  it  would  n't  fit 
my  Empire  bed;  it  was  too  large,  and  how  a  more 
fortunate  friend  owns  it.  Again  a  tragedy  of  the 
third  dimension! 


X 

COLLECTOR'S  LUCK  IN  THE  CITY 

I  AM  writing  this  because  so  many  of  you  reproach 
me,  gently  it  is  true,  but,  none  the  less,  reproach  it  is 
and  nothing  else.  " Of  course,"  you  say,  "you  live  in 
the  country  and  it  is  easy  for  you  to  find  these  lovely 
old  things  in  garrets  and  attics  and  at  the  wayside 
collector's  shrine  of  auctions.  But  we  who  live  in 
the  city,  what  are  we  to  do  about  it.'^"  Now  I  am 
glad  that  I  live  in  the  country;  I  am  a  converted 
cockney,  and  I  would  not  for  one  moment  dispute  the 
happiness  o*f  my  antique  pursuits  here  among  the 
hills.  But  the  real  truth  of  the  matter  is  that  the 
better  bargains  are  in  the  city.  You  must,  of 
course,  know  how  to  look  for  them  and  where,  and, 
equally,  there  is  such  a  thing  as  "flair,"  and  some 
people  have  it  and  so  are  blessedly  fortunate. 

Any  city,  particularly  one  along  the  eastern  coast, 
is  full  of  small,  inexpensive  old-furniture  shops,  and 
places  where  second-hand  goods  are  sold,  and  little 
auction  rooms  —  even  big  auction  rooms  on  a  rainy 
day  or  at  an  off  season  —  hold  many  genuine  bar- 
gains, things  that  you  might  seek  for  years  in  the 
country  and  never  find.  Then,  too,  a  city  dealer  is 
apt  to  have  a  fairer  valuation  of  his  wares  than  many 
a  farmer  in  the  country,  who  often  has  an  unshaken 
idea  that  every  old  thing  is  very  valuable,  and  that 


COLLECTOR'S  LUCK  IN  THE  CITY    159 

"people  of  means"  —  a  favorite  expression  here- 
abouts —  are  willing  to  pay  any  price.  To  twice- 
tell  a  tale,  there  is  my  little  old  lady  out  on  the  hills, 
who  still  believes  in  her  mistaken  mine  of  wealth,  that 
ancient,  unpolished  highboy.  And  once  I  hurried  off 
without  my  lunch  to  see  a  treasure  of  an  old  desk,  and 
found  a  rickety,  jiggly  soft-wood  thing,  painted  a 
bright  red,  with  one  twisted  willow-pull  still  on  it,  so 
broken  that  it  was  fit  for  nothing  else  than  the  wood- 
pile, and  all  the  modest  owner  wanted  was  seventy- 
five  dollars! 

I  could  go  on  unendingly :  the  old  "flow  blue  "  that 
a  farmer  declared  was  over  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years  old  —  had,  in  fact,  "come  over  in  the  May- 
flower"; that  time  in  the  unsuspecting  days  of  my 
youth,  when  an  honest  husbandman  sold  me  a  quite 
modern  Windsor  chair  for  more  than  it  had  cost  when 
it  left  its  recent  furniture-shop  home;  an  uninter- 
esting, scrolled,  scrawled,  late-Empire  sofa  for  which 
a  countrywoman  wanted,  as  I  remember  the  price, 
something  like  its  weight  in  gold.  I  won't  pursue 
the  theme,  for,  after  all,  this  chapter  deals  with  what 
you  can  get  in  the  city  rather  than  what  you  can't 
buy  in  the  country. 

Two  other  reasons  there  are  why  old  furniture  is 
easier  to  find  in  cities  than  in  rural  districts:  East- 
ern cities,  that  is,  for  the  Atlantic  coast  was  settled 
at  least  a  century  before  the  inland  country  where  I 
live  began  to  be  colonized.     So,  naturally,  the  older 


160  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

things  just  must  be  in  the  cities,  you  see.  That 's 
my  first  reason,  and  a  logical  second  is  that  for  years, 
small  dealers,  journeying  middlemen  of  the  trade, 
have  pretty  well  combed  out  the  countryside,  and 
added  its  largess  to  the  treasures  already  in  town. 
Really,  I  find  a  third,  which  is  that  there  are  so 
many  more  homes  in  the  city  to  be  broken  up;  so 
many  more  people  to  move  away ;  and  sell  the  furni- 
ture that  they  do  not  wish  to  take  with  them  into 
their  lives  beyond.  A  lot  of  people,  you  know,  don't 
like  old  things:  luck  for  you  and  me. 

I  have  chosen  the  Sheraton  chair  opposite  to  illus- 
trate this  very  point.  It  is  a  late  Sheraton,  the  type 
that  is  almost  Empire,  that  influence  showing  in  the 
massive  band  at  the  top,  the  carved  acanthus  leaves 
and  rosettes,  and  in  the  heavier  legs,  no  longer  the 
slender  fluting  seen  in  Sheraton's  earlier  types.  The 
wood  is  teak,  such  a  tender  amber-brown  in  tone; 
the  slip  seat  a  very  fine  meshed  cane.  And  the  fam- 
ily legend  says  that  it  was  brought  over  to  this  coun- 
try in  one  of  the  last  of  the  old  sailing-vessels  of  com- 
merce. Six  chairs  and  a  sofa  made  up  the  set,  and 
when  my  sister  rather  indirectly  heard  that  there  was 
some  old  furniture  for  sale  at  this  Boston  house,  — 
the  family  were  moving  to  the  far  West,  —  she  found 
three  of  the  chairs  and  the  sofa  ready  to  be  hers. 
Two  of  the  chairs  she  bought  —  a  friend,  the  other  — 
for  fifteen  dollars  apiece,  and  I  cannot  help  com- 
mending her  noble,  disinterested  action  in  regard  to 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Watson. 

Late  Sheraton  chair  made  of  teakwood 
with  slip-seat  of  fine  cane.  Notice  the 
details  of  the  carving. 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Watson. 


Maple  eighteenth-century  chair 
"picked up"  in  Cambridge,  Mass. 
The  splat  is  interestingly  turned, 
and  the  base  shows  the  earlier 
Jacobean  influence. 


From  the  author's  collection. 


Maple  chair  of  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century.     Originally  from 
Newburyport,  but  bought  in  Boston  for  $12 


ittuttuuouniuitHiuutDiiHwwioiwuiMmaiimmiwtiiiHHH 


COLLECTOR'S  LUCK  IN  THE  CITY    163 

the  sofa.  It  was  a  lovely  piece,  better  even  than  the 
chairs,  she  tells  me;  she  could  have  bought  it  for 
sixty -five  dollars,  a  mere  nothing  as  to  value;  instead, 
she  persuaded  the  owner  to  take  it  West  with  her, 
and  to  keep  such  a  beautiful  heirloom  in  the  family. 
Could  old-furniture  forbearance  go  further? 

The  maple  chair  on  the  opposite  page  is  much 
earlier,  —  eighteenth  century,  perhaps  about  1760 
or  1770,  —  just  a  "middling"  chair  of  maple,  with  a 
rush-seat  and  the  elaborated  splat-back  which  the 
Dutch  influence  brought  in  and  with  which  Chippen- 
dale wrought  such  wonders.  It  came  originally  from 
Newburyport,  —  a  fact  that  endeared  it  to  me,  be- 
cause half  of  my  ancestry  comes  from  that  small, 
very  New  England  town,  while  the  other  half  is 
fiercely  Southern,  —  and  I  bought  it  for  twelve  dol- 
lars in  one  of  the  smaller,  less-considered  Charles 
Street  shops,  where  I  have,  nevertheless,  found  many 
bargains.     It  did  n't  have  a  seat  then. 

The  lower  one,  on  page  161,  is  even  older,  although 
the  splat-back  is  very  similar  in  type;  for  the  base 
shows  the  seventeenth-century  baluster  turning  and 
the  Spanish  foot  that  Catharine  of  Portugal  introduced 
into  England.  It  was  bought  in  a  Boston  suburb  for 
eighteen  dollars.  It  had  been  literally  thrown  upon 
a  cruel  world,  for  the  last  of  the  family  that  had 
owned  it  had  died  a  short  time  before,  and  all  their 
household  goods  had  been  taken  over  by  a  second- 
hand dealer. 


164  COLLECTOR'S   LUCK 

But  chairs  are  not  the  only  things  one  can  find. 
There  are  tables,  and  would  n't  you  have  liked  to  pick 
up  the  graceful  mahogany  tip-table  I  am  showing 
you?  It  is  a  type  that  belongs  to  the  late  eighteenth 
century,  a  type  usuallj^  called  Hepplewhite  because 
it  has  the  delicate  spade-feet  which  this  cabinet- 
maker used  so  much.  The  wood  is  full  of  fire,  with 
beautiful  marking  in  the  tipping-top,  and,  just  as  it 

is,  old  brass  snap  and  all,  it  was  found  by  M , 

in  Boston,  for  ten  dollars.  Long  years  ago  it  was 
brought  from  England  to  this  country,  and  stayed 
quietly  in  one  home,  until  the  household  was  broken 
up  and  the  furniture  sold.  The  present  owner  heard 
of  it  just  at  the  fortunate,  psychological  moment. 

And  I  am  almost  equally  fond  of  her  old  dining- 
table.  You  see  how  wide  the  centre-board  is,  — 
surely  the  tree  was  more  than  a  century  in  growing! 
—  but,  alas,  that  you  cannot  behold  the  beautiful, 
polished  depth  of  the  mahogany!  Full  Empire  it 
is;  the  base  indicates  that,  with  its  central  pedestal, 
the  carved  acanthus  leaves,  and  the  hand-engraved 
claw-feet  of  brass.  I  have  so  many  pleasant  asso- 
ciations with  its  intimate  hospitality  that  maybe 
I  'd  like  it  even  if  it  were  not  so  good;  but  its  excel- 
lence makes  a  double  motive  of  appreciation.  This 
was  bought  in  a  large  manufacturing  city  of  northern 
Massachusetts  for  just  forty-eight  dollars.  Have  you 
ever  tried  to  see  how  far  that  amount  would  go  in 
modern  furniture  —  for  instance,  in  that  delightful 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Watson. 

Mahogany  tip- table.  A  very  fine 
piece  brought  over  from  England  in 
the  late  eighteenth  century. 


^jwM mwiiiuiuuuwKim 


iiiioijniiimiaumiiiiiiaiiiitiuiiiiaiiHiHrmiaiininiiiuoniiniaiaaHiiiiiuiannniuucwui 


itniimiiauuitiiiinDtni 


iiiQliinuiiiiitsiiiiiiiiyQitmiiMiioiiiiiminiH^ 


Late  Empire  work-table.  Another  city 
"find"  and  an  excellent  example  of  the 
plainer  type  of  table. 


Footstool  of  the  early-nineteenth-century  period. 
Excellent  wood  in  the  frame. 


Both  table  and  stool  from  Mrs.  Watson's  collection. 


Old  pressed-glass  candlesticks  with  glass  bobeches  and  "drops."' 


This  Sheffield  cake-basket  in  the  pierced  design  is  very 
charming  and  light. 

These  two  pieces  are  from  the  collection  of  Mrs.  Watson. 


COLLECTOR'S  LUCK  IN  THE  CITY     169 

type  known  to  some  dealers  as  "a  unique  William 
and  Mary  table  in  the  popular  Jacobean  finish"? 
Because,  if  you  have  n't,  it  will  be  discipline  to  your 
soul. 

The  mahogany  work-table  with  the  three  drawers, 
which  are  actually  only  two  and  the  third  just  pre- 
tending to  be,  is  a  good  example  of  the  later,  plainer 
Empire  about  1820.  The  proportions  are  especially 
just,  and  the  beauty  of  the  veneered  top  —  Empire's 
strongest  attraction,  I  think  —  is  quite  unusual; 
altogether  a  desirable  piece  for  a  bedroom  or  a  sit- 
ting-room. It  was  bought  in  Cambridge  for  fourteen 
dollars. 

And  M has  been  lucky  in  little  things,  too. 

The  small  footstool  which  I  have  tried  and  tried  to 
get  in  the  country,  always  quite  without  success,  and 
which  she  "attracted"  to  her  collecting  personality 
for  a  dollar  and  a  half;  the  charming  pierced  Sheffield 
cake-basket  which  she  found  in  a  second-hand  shop 
and  bought  for  eight  dollars;  the  pressed-glass  can- 
dlesticks with  the  scalloped  bobeches  and  little  dan- 
gling, jangling  glass  bells  which  were  eight  more; 
and  the  "  court  ing-mirror  " ! 

Now  this  is  such  a  particular  piece  that  I  feel  that  I 
must  begin  a  new  paragraph  with  its  history  —  its 
immediate  history,  I  mean,  for,  like  so  many  of  these 
now  cherished  waifs  and  strays,  I  do  not  know  the 
story  of  the  days  of  its  youth.  But  first,  may  I  be  a 
little  didactic.'*     Lockwood  has  an  interesting  account 


170  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

and  version  of  this  type.  Until  I  read  what  he  had 
to  say,  I  always  accepted  the  version  of  them  as  being 
just  "  court ing-mirrors,"  so  contrived  and  packed  as 
to  be  easily  swung  on  the  saddle  of  some  visiting 
Zek'l  who  wished  to  appear  at  his  rustic  best  before 
Huldy.  But  now  I  think  differently,  or,  at  least, 
with  modifications,  for  who  would  dispute  Lockwood? 
He  writes :  — 

"In  the  vicinity  of  many  of  the  seaport  towns,  es- 
pecially about  Salem,  has  been  found  a  looking-glass 
which  was  very  small  and  usually  set  in  a  box.  These 
looking-glasses  are  very  crudely  made,  the  mouldings 
being  very  simply  glued  together  and  covered  with  a 
very  thin  metal  resembling  what  is  known  as  a  Dutch 
metal.  Between  these  mouldings  are  strips  of 
painted  glass,  and  at  the  centre  of  the  top  is  painted  a 
basket  of  flowers.  The  entire  frame  sets  in  a  shal- 
low box,  and  has  a  wooden  slide-cover.  These  look- 
ing-glasses have  acquired  the  name  of  courting- 
glasses  for  which  no  good  reason  can  be  assigned.  It 
has  been  puzzling  to  trace  their  origin,  but  after  an 
examination  of  a  large  number,  the  writer  is  con- 
vinced that  they  are  of  Chinese  origin,  and  were 
brought  to  this  country  from  China  by  sea-captains. 
Some  of  the  reasons  for  this  conclusion  are:  That 
the  frame  is  not  made  in  the  method  employed  by 
Europeans;  the  wood  is  the  same  as  is  found  on 
frames  of  a  number  of  paintings  on  glass  which  are 
indisputably  of  Chinese  origin,  and  all  that  the  writer 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Watson. 


The  "  courting-mirror,"  as  perfect  as  the 
day  it  was  made.  Probably  brought  from 
China  about  1800. 


«£ 


wKmmmammmmm 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Carleton. 
Lustre  pitchers  and  mug,  all  from  the  city:  each  one  beautiful,  each  one  different. 


DHimiiHiinHiiiinHiiOHiHinminiiiiiriiiinoiiiiiiititiRiiiiiiiritiHDiiKiimiiitiinifiiMnciiti 


DiiiunuiiiinnuinunmiicjlinnnimQtiiiiiiitiriatuiMHiMQiiiiiuiiiii 


COLLECTOR'S  LUCK  IN  THE  CITY     173 

has  seen  which  were  in  their  original  condition  have, 
between  the  plate  of  glass  and  the  thin  wooden  back, 
strips  of  Chinese  paper;  the  painting  on  the  glass 
is  done  in  the  same  manner  and  in  the  same  peculiar 
colors  as  those  that  were  made  in  China.  The  frame 
also  indicates  its  Eastern  origin,  not  being  in  a  form 
used  in  Europe  at  that  time." 

The  one  shown  on  page  171  is  in  perfect  condi- 
tion, in  the  old  box,  with  the  old  nails  holding  it  in 
place;  it  might,  except  for  a  certain  mellowness  that 
the  detaining  hand  of  Time  always  gives,  have  just 
come  from  Canton   or  Shanghai.     I  wonder  where 

its    first    American    home    was.^^     M found   it 

in  a  small  second-hand  shop  on  an  eighteenth-cen- 
tury Boston  court,  not  so  very  far,  really,  from 
the  old  Boston  "Measuring  Stone,"  and  its  price 
was  ten  dollars  and  a  half.  When  I  look  at  it  I 
think  of  the  true  worth  of  a  dealer's  heart,  for  a 
dealer,  who  is  a  collector  as  well,  directed  her  to  this 
treasure  instead  of  buying  it  for  himself.  But  then 
he  is  a  most  unusual  man;  once  he  offered  me  what  I 
believe  was  a  Mclntyre  mantel,  part  of  the  dilapi- 
dated beauty  of  an  old  Lynn  house,  —  and  cer- 
tainly its  graceful  carving  justified  my  belief,  —  for 
fifteen  dollars.  Only  the  knowledge  that  my  house 
was  already  full  of  mantels  that  Webster  must  have 
leaned  against,  or  looked  at,  anyhow,  kept  me  from 
buying  it  on  the  spot. 

It  is  lustre,  however,  that  proves  more  than  any 


174  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

other  thing  the  value  of  city  collecting.  In  the 
first  place,  you  rarely  find  complete  sets  in  the  coun- 
try, nowadays,  and,  if  you  do,  the  owner  appraises 
them  far  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  real  worth. 
I  know  where  there  is  one  such  set.  It  is  averagely 
attractive,  nothing  more,  and  I  doubt  if  the  good 
woman  would  sell  it  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  a  fairly  expensive  city  shop,  I 
have  had  the  opportunity  to  buy  a  set  of  pink  lustre, 
quite  as  complete  and  infinitely  more  charming,  for 
seventy-five  dollars.  And  I  can't  forget  the  long, 
long  trip  a  friend  and  I  took  one  autumn  afternoon 
through  a  russet-brown  country  that  was  getting 
ready  for  its  winter  sleep.  I  could  go  on  poetically 
about  the  farmhouse  we  visited  and  the  farmer  him- 
self, for  his  eyes  were  as  blue  as  the  fairy -flax,  and  his 
hair  certainly  as  yellow  as  the  corn-stubble  in  his 
fields  beyond.  And  I  am  sure  that  his  heart  was  ut- 
terly guileless;  he  just  did  n't  know.  I  say  this  still, 
even  when  I  recall  the  little,  worthless  lustre  pitcher 
that  looked  as  if  it  had  come  straight  from  a  five- 
and-ten-cent  store;  and  was  so  very  bad  that  actually 
you  could  n't  tell  whether  it  was  old  or  new. 

"It 's  a  real  museum  piece,"  he  announced  proudly. 

"What  do  you  think  it  is  worth?"  I  asked  in  idle 
curiosity,  for  nothing  could  have  induced  me  to  buy 
it,  and  I  can  only  thank  my  Guardian  Angel  that 
I  had  put  it  back  safely  on  the  table  before  he  re- 
plied, "Twenty-five  dollars."     Sheer  surprise  would 


COLLECTOR'S  LUCK  IN  THE  CITY     175 

have  made  me  drop  it,  I  know.  Now,  of  all  these 
lovely  pitchers  (see  page  172),  all  bought  in  Boston, 
not  one  cost  even  half  that  amount,  and  they  are  all 
genuine  and  valuable  as  well  as  beautiful.  I  like  best 
the  little  one  at  the  left;  gold  lustre  with  an  under- 
flush  of  pink,  and  raised  figures  in  a  creamy  white. 
I  think  it  must  be  Wedgwood,  not  only  because  he 
first  made  this  sort  of  lustre,  but  because  the  designs 
are  pure  eighteenth-century  classicism,  and  the  little 
grape-and-vine  relief  pattern  at  the  top  precisely 
like  a  set  I  have  in  blue  and  white  that  is  authentically 
marked  Wedgwood.  Another  chosen  one  is  the 
creamer  at  the  other  side,  for  the  shape  really  is 
unusually  graceful  and  the  vivid  yellow  band  so  very 
attractive  with  its  brightly  colored  flower  decoration. 

I  have  tried  to  save  my  best  city-collecting  tale 
for  the  last.  A  friend  of  mine  who  lives  in  an  apart- 
ment house  was  moving  in  just  as  the  people  above 
were  moving  out.  As  they  left,  one  of  the  family  said 
to  her,  "We've  dumped  some  old  furniture  in  the 
cellar.  We  don't  want  it,  but  if  it 's  any  use  to  you, 
keep  it  by  all  means."  When  my  lucky  friend  looked, 
she  found  a  very  good  stenciled  rocker,  and  a  gilt 
Empire  mirror  with  a  delightful  painted  picture  at 
the  top. 

All  of  these  things,  really,  can  happen  to  you, 
people  of  little  faith,  who  live  in  the  city.  I  speak 
with  deep  feeling,  for  only  to-day  I  have  been  offered  a 
very  modest  four-slat  chair  for  the  unblushing  price 


176  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

of  fifty  dollars.  That  was  here  in  the  hills,  in  the 
tiniest  village!  A  few  weeks  ago  in  Philadelphia  I 
bought  a  five-slat  beauty,  with  well-turned  stretch- 
ers, ball-feet,  and  the  old  rush-seat,  for  fifteen.  Of 
course,  you  ' ve  got  to  know  the  game :  what  to  buy 
and  where  to  go  to  get  it;  and  it 's  always  going  to  be 
a  case  of  Caveat  emptor.  But  this  is  a  collecting  rule 
that  proves  equally  true,  in  city  and  country  alike. 


XI 
THE   FRIENDLY  FIREPLACE 

Shut  in  from  all  the  world  without. 
We  sat  the  clean-winged  hearth  about. 

Do  you  know,  I  had  n't  the  faintest  idea  what  a 
" clean- winged  hearth"  really  was  until  I  had  one 
myself?  I  have  always  loved  "Snowbound,"  but 
I  think  it  actually  came  alive  to  me  first  when  I  had 
the  happiness  of  restoring  an  old  fireplace,  and  min- 
istering to  its  many  needs:  seeing  that  the  old 
tongs  and  shovel  and  warming-pan  were  burnished 
and  ranged  in  an  honorable  row;  that  the  skimmers 
and  ladles  shone ;  that  the  foot- warmer  was  in  place, 
and  the  great  bronzed  turkey-wing  ready  to  sweep 
up  the  hearth;  in  fact,  that  all  the  paraphernalia,  the 
gleaming  symbols  that  reflected  eighteenth-century 
farmhouse  life,  looked,  as  nearly  as  I  possibly  could 
contrive,  as  they  must  have  looked  in  the  days  of 
their  youth,  more  than  a  hundred  years  ago.  And 
another  fireside  poem  warms  my  imagination  and 
makes  me  content;  Thackeray's  lovely  rendering  of 
Ronsard's  lovelier  sonnet: 

Some  winter  night  shut  snugly  in 
Beside  the  faggots  in  the  hall, 
I  think  I  see  you  sit  and  spin 
Surrounded  by  yoiu"  maidens  all. 

Of  course,  by  that  time,  the  hearth  no  longer 
blazed  in  the  centre  of  the  hall,  for  that  belonged  to 


178  COLLECTOR'S   LUCK 

the  Middle  Ages,  and  Ronsard  sang  his  lays  in  the 
sixteenth  century.  The  next  step  was  to  replace 
this  smoky  central  domestic  altar  by  the  wall-chim- 
ney with  a  projecting  brick  hood.  We  always  think 
of  old  fireplaces  as  being  so  extremely  large,  but  at 
first  they  were  only  moderate  in  size,  and  later  be- 
came the  enormous  things  that  they  were  in  the  six- 
teenth and  seventeenth  centuries  because  their 
builders  had  the  false  notion  that  the  larger  the  fire 
the  greater  the  warmth  in  the  room.  It  remained 
for  the  sensible  later  eighteenth  century  to  discover 
that  such  fireplaces  not  only  burned  a  great  deal  of 
wood,  but  that  the  cold  air  was  thrust  by  the  draught 
in  great  masses  through  the  chimney,  that  fuel  was 
becoming  scarce,  and  that  a  smaller  fireplace  would 
not  only  be  economical,  but  would  throw  the  heat 
farther  out  into  the  room. 

Look  at  the  old  fireplace  in  the  "Paul  Revere 
House,"  an  excellent  example  of  the  ordinary  hearth 
of  most  "middling"  families  in  the  seventeenth  and 
early  eighteenth  centuries,  with  its  accompanying 
pots  and  hooks  and  trammels,  its  wide  spaces,  its 
oven,  and  even,  hanging  there  with  attendant 
powder-horn  and  canteen,  a  musket  that  I  am  sure 
must  resemble  "the  old  Queen's  arm  that  Gran'ther 
Young  brought  back  f'om  Concord  busted."  Lucy 
Larcom,  in  her  quaint,  delightful,  lavender-scented 
autobiography,  "A  Nev/  England  Girlhood,"  paints 
one  of  these  fireplaces  so  much  more  charmingly  than 


The  author's  late-eighteenth-century  fireplace  with  old  kettles,  shovels, 
skimmers,  and  turkey-wing  to  brush  up  the  hearth. 


THE   FRIENDLY  FIREPLACE  181 

I  can  hope  to  that  I  am  quoting  her  words,  "The 
fireplace  was  deep,  and  there  was  a  'settle'  in  the 
chimney-corner,  where  three  of  us  younger  girls 
could  sit  together  and  toast  our  toes  on  the  andirons 
(two  Continental  soldiers  in  full  uniform,  marching 
one  after  the  other) ,  while  we  looked  up  the  chimney 
into  a  square  of  blue  sky,  and  sometimes  caught  a 
snow-flake  on  our  foreheads;  or  sometimes  smirched 
our  clean  aprons  (high-necked  and  long-sleeved  ones, 
known  as  '  tiers ')  against  the  swinging  crane  with  its 
sooty  pot-hooks  and  trammels."  She  goes  on  to 
praise  the  cooking  done  at  such  firesides:  "Never 
was  there  anything  better  than  my  mother's  fire- 
cake";  and  really,  when  you  think  it  over  and  begin 
to  examine  the  many  conveniences  that  our  Colonial 
ancestors  had,  you  will  see  that  they  were  not  at 
all  badly  off.  Certainly  no  modern  contrivance  has 
bettered  the  slow,  full,  juicy  method  of  roasting  meat 
upon  a  spit. 

My  own  century-later  fireplace  —  the  house  was 
built  in  the  late  seventeen  hundreds  —  is  small  in 
comparison  with  these  huge  affairs,  but  many  of  the 
devices  have  been  retained:  the  crane,  for  instance, 
and  the  old  brick  oven.  Is  n't  it  interesting  to  think 
that  this  was  a  pre-visioning  of  our  modern  fireless 
cooker.^  The  fire  was  made  in  the  upper  oven,  and 
then,  when  the  bricks  were  thoroughly  heated,  the 
embers  were  raked  down  below,  the  pies  and  beans 
and  Indian  pudding  slid  into  the  oven  by  that  long 


182  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

shovel-like  "peel,"  and  the  iron  door  shut  upon  them. 
How  sad  that  a  stern  husband  and  a  defective  furnace 
flue  prevent  me  from  cooking  this  way  in  the  blessed 
year  of  nineteen  hundred  and  eighteen,  and  so  grati- 
fying my  antiquarian  instincts!  I  am  going  back 
just  a  minute  to  this  old  "peel"  or  "slice,"  for  it  was 
so  very  important,  you  know,  no  bride's  plenishing 
being  complete  without  one.  Ours  we  discovered 
buried  in  the  cellar  of  a  fraternity  house  nearby, 
and  at  first  we  were  puzzled,  till  we  remembered  that 
this  house  had  started  life  as  a  private  dwelling, 
a  local  mansion  even,  for  here  Matthew  Arnold  was 
entertained  on  his  well-known,  disdainful  trip  through 
New  England.  At  various  places  through  Northern 
New  Hampshire  I  have  picked  up  my  old  utensils: 
from  attics  and  garrets  they  have  come,  and  that 
tall,  three-legged  pot  was  the  first  thing  I  ever 
bought  at  an  auction,  my  "opening  wedge."  I  shall 
never  forget  the  auctioneer;  he  had  such  a  good 
"line"  as  our  boys  at  college  say.  Why  I  bid  on  it 
at  all,  I  don't  know,  because  certainly  my  theories 
of  antique  harmony  were  then  in  their  infancy.  It 
was  a  quick  impulse,  but  it  did  seem  so  entrancing  to 
buy  anything  for  ten  cents.  He  handed  it  over  with 
a  bow  and  the  remark  that  it  was  "the  latest  thing 
in  fireless  cookers";  whereupon  an  old  woman  who 
was  sorry  for  my  youth  and  inexperience  said, 
"Don't  you  believe  him,  child.  It's  to  set  in  the 
coals  and  cook  your  vittles  in."     I  have  not  made 


From  the  author  s  collection. 

Old  hand- wrought  iron  andirons;  these  and  the  brass  beaded  shovel 
and  tongs  were  picked  up  in  Vermont  and  averaged  something  under 
five  dollars. 


From  the  parlur  ill   Wvhslcr  cotlmjc.  I 

Old  Franklin  fire-frame  with  "steeple-top"  andirons,  shovel,  and  tongs.         I 


THE  FRIENDLY  FIREPLACE         185 

quite  that  use  of  it,  but  I  do  know  that  with  the  cover 
inverted  it  is  the  nicest  thing  in  the  world  to  hold  a 
plate  of  toasted  muffins,  and  keep  them  warm  while 
we  are  having  tea  beside  the  fire. 

The  four  andirons,  one  pair  tall  and  slender,  the 
middles  short  and  squat,  I  bought  at  other  auctions, 
and  I  am  explaining  the  rather  unusual  fashion  of 
two  pairs  at  once.  It  saves  me  from  using  a  fire- 
screen, and  forms  a  fire-protection  that  I  really  pre- 
fer. All  told,  the  two  pairs  of  andirons  and  the  shovel 
and  tongs  shown  with  them  in  the  detailed  group 
cost  something  under  five  dollars.  I  really  am  so 
very  fond  of  this  fireplace;  so  many  people  must 
have  sat  before  its  embers  and  enjoyed  its  warmth 
as  I  do;  and,  in  the  dusk  of  a  winter  twilight,  it 
throws  such  an  enchanting  glow  out  on  the  snow  that 
I  can  see  the  witches  making  their  tea  very  comfort- 
ably indeed. 

I  am  quite  as  proud  of  my  Franklin  fire-frame, 
although  I  am  not  so  intimate  with  it.  It  is  stately; 
I  honor  and  revere  it  more;  but  nobody  has  ever 
dubbed  it  "the  friendly  fireplace,"  the  name  that  the 
one  in  the  dining-room  goes  by.  Benjamin  Franklin 
invented  these  stoves  and  fireplaces  in  1742,  but  it  is 
said  that  "Baron"  Stiegel  really  perfected  and  har- 
monized their  use  to  the  ordinary  dwelling.  This 
frame  was  probably  built  in  when  the  house  was 
erected,  and  is  not  a  later  addition,  as  so  frequently 
happens.     How  delighted  we  were,  when,  removing 


186  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

the  huge  soapstone  stove  that  obscured  its  beauties, 
we  saw  revealed  its  columns  and  the  delicate  tracery 
of  acanthus  leaves  just  inside. 

I  am  very  proud  of  my  andirons,  too.  My  favor- 
ite junk-man  brought  them,  and  oh,  my  Collecting 
Friends,  listen  to  my  guiding  words,  and  if  you  have  n't 
a  favorite  junk-man,  get  him  at  once.  For  he  travels 
over  the  country,  not  by  avocation  as  you  do,  but  by 
the  law  of  livelihood's  stern  necessity;  he  covers  ten 
miles  to  your  one;  and  he  will  go  to  places  you  would 
never  dream  of  discovering.  Of  course,  at  first,  until 
he  is  trained,  he  will  bring  in  fearful  rubbish  —  things 
that  no  self-respecting  collector  would  have  in  the 
house;  but,  if  you  persevere,  such  treasures  as  these 
may  be  your  reward.  I  can  never  cease  to  remember 
Mr.  Plotkin's  first  appearance,  smiling  at  the  delight 
he  was  going  to  confer  upon  me,  with  a  battered  bird- 
cage in  one  hand,  a  quite  modern,  hardware-store 
kettle  in  the  other.  I  dashed  his  confident  first 
illusions;  but  he  improved  as  time  went  on,  and  these 
gracious,  graceful  andirons  are  the  result.  "Steeple- 
tops"  they  are  called,  and  the  shovel  and  tongs 
match  them.  At  an  easy  estimate  they  are  worth 
seventy -five  dollars,  and,  if  you  went  to  a  very  select 
shop,  you  might  have  to  pay  a  hundred  for  them. 
The  price  I  gave  was  twenty -five,  so  you  can  see  my 
method  pays.  I  need  the  little  pointing  jamb-hooks 
that  go  with  them ;  I  know  where  there  is  a  pair,  but 
the  obdurate  owner  insists  that  he  likes  them  quite 


i        Collection  of  Dr.  C ahum. 


Collection  of  Dr.  Cobum. 

Eighteenth-century  brass  andirons. 


Old  hand-wrought  iron  andirons,  and  "acorn   tops,"  sometimes  f 

called  "lemon  tops."  | 


jWHwiuianmtiiuutMuuimiiaiiuuiiiuiautt 


— * 


THE  FRIENDLY  FIREPLACE  189 

as  well  as  I  do,  even  if  he  has  n't  any  andirons  to 
match,  and  warms  himself  just  by  a  commonplace 
stove.     Still,  the  true  collector  never  despairs. 

Some  connoisseurs  insist  that  andirons  should  be 
of  wrought  iron,  bronze,  or  ormolu,  giving  as  their 
reason  that  steel  and  brass  require  over-much  polish- 
ing. All  of  which  may  be  true;  and  certainly,  when 
you  consider  all  the  brass  and  all  the  white  paint 
that  the  Colonial  housewife  had  to  clean,  you  feel  as 
if  she  had  conscientiously  laid  out  work  for  herself; 
but,  somehow,  when  I  have  rubbed  my  andirons  and 
polished  my  warming-pan  until  it  shines  like  the 
harvest-moon,  I  know  that  I  have  burnished  my 
own  soul! 

Can  you  see  how  my  fire-frame  is  built  quite  out 
and  forward.'^  That  throws  the  heat  into  the  room 
as  I  have  never  known  any  other  device  to  do,  mak- 
ing warmth  possible,  even  without  the  aid  of  a  furnace, 
in  the  coldest  weather.  We  proved  this  one  dread- 
ful never-to-be-forgotten  night  last  winter,  when  the 
thermometer  went  lower  than  the  Oldest  Inhabitant 
ever  remembered,  went  down  and  down  and  lingered 
in  those  fearful  forty-belows  for  a  fortnight.  And 
on  the  very  coldest  evening  of  all,  when  it  was  too 
late  to  send  for  a  plumber  or  to  go  anywhere  else, 
our  ancient,  loved  furnace  up  and  died  on  our  hands, 
and  we  had  to  drag  our  beds  down  and  sleep  colonially 
in  front  of  the  fire,  which  answered  beautifully,  as 
long  as  we  could  remember  not  to  go  to  sleep,  and  to 


190  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

pile  and  pile  on  the  logs.  Then  we  could  keep  warm, 
but  to  wake  in  the  gray,  frozen  dawn  to  a  blackened 
hearth!  I  know  now  what  Cotton  Mather  meant 
by  "the  long  and  strong  bands  of  a  New  England 
winter"  being  laid  upon  him;  I  realize  feelingly  why 
feather-beds  were  in  vogue.  But  this  I  know,  too; 
that  there  is  nothing  more  delightful  to  fall  asleep 
by  than  this  wavering,  flickering,  rosy  light,  which 
glows  and  wanes  and  glows  again  and  transfigures 
everything  that  it  touches. 

Naturally,  all  this  collecting  luck  has  n't  been  mine. 
Observe,  please,  the  wonderful  set  of  "acorn-tops,"  — 
andirons,  fender,  jamb-hooks,  shovel  and  tongs, — 
belonging  to  L .  She  found  them  in  a  little  Ver- 
mont town  just  across  the  river  from  us,  and  even 
at  the  price  she  paid  for  them,  they  are  an  immense 
bargain,  for  such  a  complete  set  is  almost  impossible 
to  find  nowadays.  And  a  still  better  "  antique-ing " 
tale  concerns  itself  \^^ith  that  other  elaborate  set. 
My  friend,  the  doctor,  who  discovered  them,  always 
speaks  of  them  as  his  most  fortunate  gamble.  Driv- 
ing through  the  countryside  at  dusk,  he  stopped  at  a 
lonely  farmhouse  to  ask  the  way ;  and  the  talk  taking 
a  collecting  turn,  the  farmer  said  he  had  some  old 
andirons  up  in  the  attic  that  had  been  there  for 
years,  and  that  he  never  wanted  to  use.  Would  the 
doctor  give  him  two  dollars  for  them.^^  The  doctor 
replied  that  he  was  too  tired  to  move,  but  that  he  was 
willing  to  take  a  sporting  chance,  and  pay  what  was 


i^Tii»aaiiiiaiia«aaMii.OTMiaiiiinmiiiii»iiiiiim«iiiiiiiiiiiro»^^ 


O 
O 

^ 

B 


Colltrtiun  of  Dr.  Coburn. 

The  "two-dollar  gamble."  an  extremely  handsome  set,  probably  English 
and  worth  easilv  a  hundred  dollars. 


THE   FRIENDLY   FIREPLACE  193 

asked,  if  the  farmer  would  bring  them  out  and  he  not 
be  obliged  to  leave  the  carriage  and  climb  the  attic 
stairs.  And  the  reward  of  his  faith  was  this  splendid 
set  for  which  he  has  frequently  been  offered  a  hundred 
dollars. 

But  here  is  my  climax  of  collector's  luck.  Some 
acquaintances  of  mine,  digging  in  the  cellar  of  an 
eighteenth-century  country  house,  found  a  pair  of 
old  "Hessian"  andirons,  —  you  know  how  rare  they 
are !  —  and  discovered,  by  dint  of  questioning  and 
search  in  family  tradition,  that  a  most  patriotic  great- 
great-grandmother  had  buried  them  in  utter  dis- 
dain at  the  time  of  the  Revolution.  There  they  had 
lain  safely  through  more  than  a  century,  in  perfect 
condition,  except  for  a  little  rust. 

If  you  haven't  a  "friendly  fireplace,"  do  get  one! 
It  will  mean  so  much  to  you;  so  much  more  to  your 
children.  Beside  my  "clean-winged  hearth"  I  have 
sat  and  worked  and  dreamed  dreams,  and  found  the 
inspiration  to  fulfill  them.  Best  of  all,  it  has  taught 
me  something  of  the  valuable  lesson  of  Colonial  life. 


XII 
OLD  DOLLS  AND   THEIR  FURNITURE 

Some  deserted  city  stands; 
All  its  children,  sweep  and  prince, 
Grown  to  manhood  ages  since. 
There  I  '11  come  when  I  'm  a  man 
With  a  camel  caravan; 
Light  a  fire  in  the  gloom 
Of  some  dusty  dining-room; 
See  the  pictures  on  the  walls. 
Heroes,  fights  and  festivals; 
And  in  a  corner  find  the  toys 
Of  the  old  Egyptian  boys. 

I  THINK  I  am  somewhat  like  Stevenson's  small, 
vainglorious  traveler.  There  is  a  dream  I  often 
dream,  a  little  bit  sorry,  a  little  bit  glad,  a  confusion 
of  sleeping  emotions.  I  am  always  wandering  along 
some  forsaken  town,  entering  its  houses,  hunting 
through  its  attics,  and  always  I  find  the  put-away 
playthings  of  a  long  time  ago.  I  handle  them  with 
delight,  these  little  forgotten  cradles  and  chests,  and 
then  I  invariably  awake  with  tears  in  my  eyes, 
wondering  where  the  children  are.  Sometimes  in 
real  life  I  have  fulfilled  my  dreams,  and  because  col- 
lecting, in  most  of  its  phases,  is  such  a  blessed  thing, 
I  am  going  to  let  you  share  my  pleasure,  and  play  for 
a  while  with  the  sort  of  toys  that  might  have  amused 
your  grandmother,  and  her  mother,  and  even  further 
back  than  that. 


Collection  uf  Francis  lii^jtbiiv. 

A  little  early-eighteenth  century  chest  with 
"teardrop"  handles. 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Watson. 

Miniature  sofa  or  chaise  longue,  early 
eighteen  hundreds. 


OLD  DOLLS  AND  THEIR  FURNITURE     197 

Let 's  begin  with  the  dolls,  the  humanest,  the  most 
sentimentally  enduring  of  all  playthings.  There 
they  sit,  a  sedate  group,  waiting  at  the  old  Witch 
House  in  Salem  for  their  little  mothers  to  come  back 
and  get  them.  Perhaps  none  of  them  date  much 
earlier  than  eighteen  hundred,  though  I  am  inclined 
to  place  the  one  in  the  middle  a  little  before  that 
time.  I  think  she  is  an  older  doll  dressed  in  a  some- 
what later  fashion.  Observe  the  discretion  of  her 
pantalettes;  the  neatness  of  her  fringed  cape,  both 
of  the  larmoyant  pre- Victorian  period.  Next  in  age 
comes  the  one  behind  her  —  that  dolly  so  neatly 
dressed,  whose  bonnet  is  tied  so  trimly  under  her 
chin,  the  most  "waiting"  looking  one  of  all.  At  the 
left  is  the  sort  of  doll  I  have  always  fancied  Beth's 
"Joanna"  to  be  like,  and  the  other  two  look  as  if 
they  had  been  dressed  and  played  with  and  loved  in 
1860.  And  about  them  all  there  is  something  infi- 
nitely pathetic,  don't  you  think.'* 

Me  in  her  fresh  young  arms  she  bore. 

See,  I  am  small, 

Only  a  doll, 

But  I  keep  her  kiss  forevermore. 

They  might  all  of  them  be  saying  that.     And  where 
are  those  little  lost  mothers  now.^* 

I  wish  I  could  find  for  you  to  see  —  as  I  have 
found  the  letter  —  a  doll  described  in  1741  by  Helena 
Pelham.     This  letter,  written  to  her  niece,  Penelope, 


198  COLLECTOR'S   LUCK 

I  quote  entirely  because  it  is  one  of  the  most  reveal- 
ing documents  that  has  rewarded  my  search :  — 

feburythelO;  1741. 
Dear  Little  Unknown  Penelope,  — 

I  must  love  you  childe  for  your  name.  You  are 
the  preteyest  little  wrighter  I  ever  knew.  I  hope  to 
convirce  with  you  by  letter  as  ofen  as  you  have  an 
opportunity,  that  I  may  see  how  finley  you  improve, 
you  have  all  your  requests  granted.  See  what  it  is 
to  be  a  pretey  little  begger.  a  baby  a  red  trunke 
and  a  lock  and  key.  and  I  my  little  childe  have  sent 
you  a  blue  ring  and  a  necklace,  and  a  Pelerin  to  wair 
a  bought  you  neck,  such  a  one  as  your  baby  has  on. 
I  should  be  mightley  pleasd  to  see  you  at  the  opening 
of  the  trunke,  for  I  am  sure  you  will  be  in  greate 
Joy.  pray  let  me  hear  how  you  like  all  your  things 
and  give  my  service  to  your  mama,  so  a  Due  my 
little  unknown  girl  I  shall  be  allways  your  loveing 
Aunt 

H.  Pelham. 

I  cannot  help  hoping  that  this  little  lass  of  long 
ago  was  grateful,  and  wrote  back  affectionate  letters 
to  that  loving  aunt  so  far  across  the  seas.  Helena 
Pelham  was  always  sending  Penelope  something  or 
other.  In  an  earlier  letter  she  mentions  "a  cap  I 
drest  her  up  and  pink  and  silver  ribbons  in  it  and  a 
pair  of  silver  glove  tops  and  a  tippet";  and  this 


OLD  DOLLS  AND  THEIR  FURNITURE     199 

brings  me  back  to  one  of  my  greatest  grievances.  It 
is  women  who  have  preserved  and  urged  on  civiHza- 
tion.  It  is  they  who  should  have  recorded  it.  I 
cannot  help  thinking  that,  if  Mrs.  Mather  or  Mrs. 
Sewall  had  written  the  diaries  and  letters,  instead  of 
their  worthy  husbands,  we  might  have  known  a  great 
deal  more  of  the  actual  life  of  the  times.  I  find 
myself  constantly  hungry  for  more  details,  more 
facts  than  I  discover  in  reading  these  old  records. 
Cotton  Mather  retires  to  his  study  and  prays  for 
hours  with  his  little  daughter  Katy  for  her  soul's 
good;  Judge  Sewall  begs  to  send  a  friend  a  piece  of 
his  daughter's  wedding-cake  with  a  Latin  inscription ! 
His  wife  would  have  sent  the  receipt.  Now  what  I 
want  to  find  is  Mrs.  Sewall  saying  something  like 
this:  "Gave  Judith  today  a  piece  of  blew  lutestring 
and  of  the  green  figured  paddisway  (ordered  by  my 
honored  husband,  from  Mr.  Love  of  London)  that 
she  might  make  her  baby  a  silk  dress-gown.  She 
groweth  in  diligence  daily  with  her  needle."  Or, 
from  Mrs.  Mather:  "Jemima  hath  neatly  finished 
Curtens  and  Vallens  of  yellow  watered  Camlet  for 
a  bed  that  her  brother  Samuel  hath  whittled  for  her. 
She  desires  her  loveing  duty  to  her  dear  Grand- 
mother." They  must  have  played  —  poor  little 
children  —  sometimes,  even  if  they  did  knit  their 
stockings  and  mittens  at  four  years  old.  Sammy 
Mather  was  constantly  being  rebuked  for  idleness 
by  his  father  who  wrote,    "I  must  think  of  some 


200  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

exquisite  and  obliging  Wayes,  to  abate  Sammy's 
inordinate  Love  of  Play."  /  want  to  know  how  he 
idled.     His  mother  would  have  told  me. 

But  no  matter  how  rigorous  the  Puritan  life  was 
you  may  be  sure  that  there  were  many  games  and 
some  playthings.  Mr.  Higginson  wrote  in  1695  to 
say  that,  if  toys  were  sent  over  to  this  country  in 
small  quantities,  there  would  surely  be  a  sale  for  them ; 
and  in  1712,  "Boxes  of  Toys"  were  listed  as  part  of 
the  cargo  brought  into  Boston  by  a  privateersman. 
Indeed,  it  is  surprising  that  so  many  of  these  fragile 
things  have  lasted,  outliving  the  hands  that  played 
with  them.  The  little  chest  with  its  "teardrop" 
handles  is  proof  of  this:  lovely  in  itself,  it  is  a  piece 
of  doll's  furniture  that  made  some  little  Colonial  girl 
very  happy  in  the  early  seventeen  hundreds.  Think 
of  the  small  hands  that  patted  away  lovingly  in  its 
tiny  drawers  their  treasures  of  sprigged  muslin  and 
brocade. 

From  the  Witch  House  comes  a  most  interesting 
group,  but  of  later  pieces.  The  beds  are  both  Em- 
pire, the  larger  whittled  out,  probably,  by  a  jack- 
knife.  The  tables  and  secretary  are  Empire,  too,  — 
fancy  the  fortunate  dolly  who  owned  all  this  furni- 
ture !  —  and  the  bureau  suggests  the  sleigh-front  style 
(1820  to  1830).  The  upholstered  chair  with  its  quaint 
chintz  cover  makes  me  think  a  little  of  some  of  the 
chairs  that  Hogarth  drew,  —  could  it  date  back  so 
far,  do  you  think  .^^  —  and  the  two  in  front  are  of  the 


^^  c 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Watson. 

Here  the  bureau  and  stand  are  Early-Victorian,  the  bed  Empire,  and  the 
cradle  of  an  even  earlier  date.  The  fun  grown-ups  must  have  had  making 
these  tiny  things! 


Collection  of  Mrs,  Watson. 

The  table  and  sofa  are  frankly  Victorian  in  type;  the  left-hand  chair  has  a 
feeling  of  Sheraton,  and  the  other  chair  is  a  rather  well-imitated  copy  of  the 
old  turned  "Carver"  chairs. 


Collection  of  Mrs.  Watson. 

This  fiu-niture  is  all  Early-\'ictorian.  The  right-hand  chair  shows  a  slight 
Sheraton  feeling.  As  a  whole,  this  group  of  furniture  is  less  interesting  than 
any  of  the  others  here  shown. 


OLD  DOLLS  AND  THEIR  FURNITURE    203 

type  made  in  the  early- Victorian  period  and  called 
"Gothic." 

The  miniature  sofa  may  have  been  made  for  a  little 
child  to  sit  on,  or  for  her  to  "play  dolls"  with.  I 
like  to  think  that  the  second  conjecture  is  true, 
and  anyhow  I  'm  sure  she  must  have  done  it.  To 
have  a  tempting  sofa  "just  like  Mamma's  chaise 
longue  in  the  drawing-room,  and  quite  the  right  size 
for  dear  Araminta,"  and  then  not  use  it!  It's 
unthinkable.  It  was  probably  made  in  the  early 
eighteen  hundreds,  an  Empire  piece  as  the  rope-carv- 
ing and  the  beauty  of  the  wood  indicate;  and  now 
it  has  been  re-polished  and  re-covered  and  passes  its 
days  as  a  footstool,  after  a  long,  dusty  exile  in  an 
odds-and-ends  shop. 

The  bureau  and  stand  on  the  opposite  page  are 
early- Victorian,  the  bed  Empire  and  hand-turned,  and 
the  cradle  of  an  even  earlier  date.  Frankly  mid- Vic- 
torian in  type  are  the  sofa  and  table;  the  left-hand 
chair  has  a  decided  feeling  of  Sheraton,  and,  oddly 
enough,  the  other  chair  is  a  rather  well-imitated  copy 
of  the  old  turned  chairs,  commonly  called  "Carver 
chairs"  because  they  resemble  one  that  Governor 
Carver  brought  over  in  the  Mayflower.  But  the  lower 
group  of  two  chairs  and  a  table  is  again  early- Vic- 
torian, the  right-hand  chair  showing  a  slight  Shera- 
ton influence,  and,  on  the  whole,  is  less  interesting 
than  the  other  pieces. 

The  little  bed  on  page  205,  capable  of  holding 


204  COLLECTOR'S  LUCK 

quite  a  good-sized  dolly,  and  the  cherry  bureau  are 
really  very  attractive.  The  bedposts  are  well-pro- 
portioned and  turned,  and  the  bureau  —  somehow,  a 
sleigh-front  for  a  doll  does  n't  distress  me  anywhere 
near  so  much  as  a  sleigh-front  for  myself  —  is  quite 
appealing.  The  little  bits  of  china  on  it  I  picked 
up  at  an  auction  for  five  cents  each;  the  tiny  pitcher, 
with  its  creamy  paste  and  its  little  sprigs,  makes 
you  think  of  some  of  the  old  Queensware.  Very 
few  such  pieces  remain,  though  undoubtedly  they 
were  made  quite  in  proportion  to  the  furniture.  A 
friend  of  mine  has  a  delightful  doll's  set  of  pressed 
glass,  dating  back  to  about  1830  and  fine  as  a  magni- 
fied snowflake;  and  I  have  heard  recently  of  a  set  of 
doll's  silver  in  a  Georgian  pattern. 

My  last  piece  is  not  doll's  furniture,  speaking  in 
the  strictest  sense.  But  it  is  a  chair  that  so  many 
generations  of  little  girls  have  sat  in,  holding  their 
dollies,  that  I  could  not  resist  showing  it  to  you.  Its 
date  is,  perhaps,  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, and  I  found  it  "upt'  Etny-way"  as  we  call  the 

hills   back   of   us.     We    stopped  —  L and   the 

Littlest  Daughter  and  I  —  at  a  farmhouse,  to  ask  for 
a  direction  and  a  drink  of  water.  It  was  a  quaint 
old  hundred-year  house,  rambling  out  into  sheds  and 
overwhelming  barns,  as  is  our  North  Country  fashion. 
By  the  gate  grew  a  great  thicket  of  cinnamon-roses, 
ah,  so  sweet! 

It  is  raw  April  with  us  now;  outside  a  wet  wind  is 


This  little  bed  is  capable  of  holding  quite  a  good-sized  dolly.  The  cherry, 
sleigh-front  bureau  is  very  pretty,  and  the  sprigged  china,  like  Queensware, 
was  picked  up  at  auction  for  five  cents. 


iimauumiitiiQiiiiuiiiiiiuiiiiijiiiiHtiiiiimtiiiiarimtiiiiiiaiiiiiiimii 


trj- 


An  old  chair   with   the   ubiquitous   Teddy  Bear  in 
place  of  the  doll  whose  throne  it  used  to  be. 


OLD  DOLLS  AND  THEIR  FURNITURE   207 

blowing,  and  my  candlelight  spills  itself  into  pools 
that  lie  under  my  windows  —  a  writer  lives  ahead  of 
the  season,  you  know;  but,  as  I  think  back,  I  can 
smell  those  roses  still.  I  am  again  in  midsummer. 
A  trailing  vine  had  laced  itself  across  the  front  door  — 
that  door  is  never  opened,  I  know,  but  for  weddings 
and  funerals  —  and  we  went  around  to  the  side  porch. 
The  nicest  old  lady  in  the  world  let  us  into  a  wide, 
clean  kitchen,  a  kitchen  that  had  a  well  in  it.  Im- 
agine the  joy  of  playing  Indians,  of  being  besieged, 
under  such  enticing  circumstances!  She  showed  us 
her  treasures  —  and  even  sold  us  some  of  them; 
she  gave  us  big,  red,  shiny  apples,  and,  last  of  all, 
led  us  way  up  into  the  attic.  On  the  rafters  we 
spied  this  little  chair;  so  old,  and  there  so  long,  that 
she  did  not  know  of  its  existence,  and  she  was  over 
eighty.  When  I  asked  her  if  I  might  buy  it  she 
said,  "My  dear,  I  'd  like  to  give  it  to  you  for  your 
little  girl";  and  now  it  belongs  to  the  Littlest  Daugh- 
ter, who  sits  in  it  in  her  turn,  holding  her  dolly. 

And  I  have  written  another  beatitude:  "Blessed  is 
the  true  collector  for  she  shall  inherit  the  earth." 


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